Weekly Reflection

The father in the story is really God our Father. And the boy who comes home is you or me. It is a tale of forgiveness. God is so anxious to forgive us. We are tempted to think that surely God’s forgiveness cannot work quite like that; we’d expect that a repentant sinner would have to do a lot of penance to earn God’s forgiveness. If we think like that, we are like the elder son in the parable. He is not in forgiving mood. In our own time, virtous people sometimes find it hard to forgive, hard to imagine God really and truly forgiving people who have lived irregular lives. It is easy to look at the damage of the sinner has done, and wait for him or her to do an equivalent amount of good to prove his or her sorrow. If you feel like that, just close your eyes and listen to the running feet. That’s the Father coming, running to welcome us home because we’re sorry.