The holy prophet Amos prophesied, “’Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord God, ‘that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). We live in an age when this prophecy could apply to us as a people. We live in a culture of unprecedented opportunity and opulence, coupled with negligence when it comes to the things of God. We often prefer the far country, our worldly pursuits, the things that placate our bodies so we don’t hear the hungering cry of our souls. As a people, a culture, we appear to take in little of the “words of the Lord,” preferring our own opinions to the revealed truth. We spend far more time and energy pursuing the things of this world: working, schooling, entertaining ourselves, being good materialists, than we do focusing on Christ, serving God, and desiring our inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven, life with Christ.
We live in a culture of ‘rights.’ Indeed, many people interpret democracy today to mean something along the lines of ‘I can do whatever I want as long as I don’t get caught’ Even the laws of the land can become subjectively defined according to these so-called ‘rights.’
The younger son in the parable demands his share of the inheritance prematurely, as if it is his by right, rather than a gracious gift: as if he has it coming to him even while his father is still alive! He arrogantly commands his father, saying, “Give me the portion of goods that falls to me!”
Why does the father give in to the son’s command? The answer, as we will see, is to save him in the end. You see, the son’s heart is already in exile. He’s already given himself over to the estrangement of the far off country roused by his sinful passions, life away from his identity as his father’s son. Only repentance can cure this sickness of soul.
So, he goes off to the “far country,” squandering there the gracious gift of his inheritance—life with his father—on riotous living, carousing. He gives himself over to his passions, and in the end, finds himself barren, hungry, in want. Giving into his passions leaves his soul empty.
So it is for man: there’s no sating the passions; there’s no way to satisfy their greedy want. The more we give in to them, the more they will demand—until our soul is vacuous, dead.
Compromise with the priorities and values of this culture: humanism, secularism and nihilism, obsession with material ‘security,’ will not save us or lead us to deification and salvation. Instead, it will lead our souls step by step into exile away from our Heavenly Father and the inheritance of the Saints we hope for in our faith in Him and participation in His life.
St. Gregory Palamas rightly says, that the devil beguiles us little by little, whispering to us, “even if you live independently without going to God’s Church or listening to the Church teacher, you will still be able to see for yourself what your duty is and not depart from what is good” (Homily Three, On the Parable of the Prodigal). This is the lie he whispers to us in our day.
The reality is, if we’re too busy for church, for daily prayer, for preparation to rightly receive the Sacraments, and still think our soul is healthy, we’re deceiving ourselves. Likewise, if we compare ourselves to others who take and leave what they want from holy Church and pattern our lives the same way, thinking we’re not squandering our inheritance, we’re deceiving ourselves. Luke-warmness will not grow us in Christ, but will keep us in exile.
The young man, the prodigal, is saved only when ‘he comes to himself’, that is, his right and sober mind and heart returns to him—and he realizes the depth of the mire—the pigs slop—that’s he’s sunk himself into. His physical hunger (he longs to fill his stomach with the pods the pigs eat), pales in comparison to the starvation of his soul, the hunger for the identity he gave up.
After the prodigal’s right spiritual mind is restored, he remembers who he is—one of the sons of his father. He repents with vigor; he recognizes his sins and he turns from them to his father, that is, to God. He desires only to return to his father to become one of his hired servants, saying, “how many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare…”
So what does the son do? He goes to his father to beseech him for forgiveness, to prostrate himself before him. There’s no self-legitimizing pride left, no ‘rights’: the son has gained humility in his exile. He returns a repentant man with a willingness to be a true son. And the father receives him, not as the prodigal who selfishly demanded his right to abuse his inheritance, but as the son who was lost but has now returned to his true self, his true identity.
And this person—the repentant son with the humble heart, who realizes that the world cannot sate him, that his giving in to his temporal wants and lusts cannot satisfy, this son who has “come to himself”, returned from self-imposed exile, is re-established in the blessed life and inheritance with his father, that is his and our true identity—the truth of who we are and of whom we are called to be as God’s adopted sons and daughters in Christ, vivified by the Holy Spirit.
By the father in the parable we understand Christ Himself. Christ God is the Author of all life. He has brought us into being to make us into sons and daughters through adoption into His divine, eternal life. This is His desire for every soul conceived. Like the father in the parable, Christ God has an inheritance planned for us: His kingdom, life with Him for eternity.
It’s with this repentant, contrite and humble spirit, that we come to possess our inheritance in Christ and learn to prefer the joy of the Kingdom, in the near presence of Christ God over life in the temporal and passing world. Now is the time we repent of our exiled minds and hearts, of wherever passions still hold us in exile. Now is the time to purge ourselves of whatever degree of enslavement we have to this culture’s godlessness, dehumanization, and vainglory.
God desires so much more for us: He runs to meet us in our repentance as the father in the parable does as he first sees the son return. He runs to embrace us just as soon as we start to repent, to return to our divine calling, our true identity in Him: striving to glorify God and live for Him, to be the adopted sons and daughters He’s created us to be. God showers us with His forgiveness and love even before we can prostrate ourselves before Him or muster anything close in terms of a response to His graciousness and love for us.
When our heart and our mind are focused on Christ and His Kingdom, we know where we are headed, we journey as sons or daughters further up and further in the Kingdom. Life in the world only makes sense and is redemptive if we seek first the Kingdom of God and prefer it to the “far country,” exile. Life in the Kingdom, this inheritance, begins now manifesting itself in our daily lives; it’s made moment by moment as we work out our salvation in humility and repentance: as we attend the divine services in earnest, as we pray, as we partake of the Sacraments, as we witness to the truth of Christ in the world around us. God receives us. He loves us. He embraces us. He makes us not into one of His hired servants, but instead restores us to sonship. He feeds us with the fatted calf, that is, His Lamb, the Body and Blood of Christ, the Foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet of our inheritance with God in the Saints.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday of the Prodigal Son
February 16, 2014
Epistle: I Corinthians 6:12-20
Gospel: Luke 15: 11-32
