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.’ 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 from his father: he feels he has it coming to him. There’s no prostration here, but rather a command, “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. 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. Only repentance cures this sickness of soul.
So, he goes off to the far country and there squanders the gracious gift of his inheritance on riotous living, carousing. He gives himself completely over to his passions, but in the end, finds himself barren, hungry, and in want. It cannot satisfy or fill the emptiness in his soul.
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 dead, until we are dead.
Compromise with the priorities and values of this culture: making peace with humanism, secularism and nihilism for the sake of oversensitivity, prideful fear of standing out as Orthodox, will not save us or lead 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 faith.
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 that if we’re too busy for church and still think our soul is healthy, we are deceived. Likewise, if we compare ourselves to others who take and leave what they want from holy Church and pattern our lives the same way and think we’re not squandering our inheritance, we’re deceived. Luke warmness will not grow us in Christ, but only 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 for a moment—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.
After the prodigal comes to himself, that is, his 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, for, he says, “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 different man, 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 reality of 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.
By the father in the parable we are, of course, to understand Christ Himself. Our earthly fathers give us life as this father has given life to his two sons. Christ God, however, is the Author of all life. It is because of His love for man that the human race participates in the building of His creation in this way. And His creation is for the purpose of making us into sons and daughters through adoption into His divine 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.
It is with this repentant, contrite and humble spirit, that we each need to be open to cultivating in our own lives if we are to escape the world and cling to life with our Father. The culture will morph and change and pass away with all its so-called ‘rights’, but life with God is forever.
Now is the time to repent of our exiled minds and hearts. Now is the time to purge ourselves of whatever degree of enslavement we have to this culture’s godlessness, dehumanization, and vainglory. The truth is that all such nihilism leads to a vacuous wasteland for our souls.
But God desires so much better for us: He runs to meet us in our repentance as the father in the parable does as he first sees the son coming home. He runs to embrace us just as soon as we start to repent, to return to our divine calling: striving to glorify God and live for Him, to be the adopted sons 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. This Kingdom, this inheritance, begins now manifesting itself in our lives. It is made day by day as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, 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, loving those around us, caught up in this culture. God receives us. He loves 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 all the Saints.
