Prodigal Stories-- Fourth Sunday Of Lent Year C Readings

John Claypool told a story about William Muehl of Yale Divinity School and something that happened in his family years ago when Dr. Muehl’s son was young.

His five-year-old son made a clay pot for his dad one year in Vacation Bible School.? Open House night finally rolled around.? The little boy was so excited he couldn’t take the excitement anymore.? When he saw his parents walking toward his room he grabbed the pottery and ran down the hall toward them.? Look dad!? Look what I made just for you!

But just before he reached them he tripped and fell, dropped the clay pot and watched as it smashed into dozens of pieces all over the floor.

As the little boy began to sob his dad tried to comfort him.? That’s OK, it doesn’t matter; it’s OK, he said.

Mom knew better.? This was her son’s gift to his father.? He’d poured himself into making it with his own hands, just for him.?

Now, what he had put his hopes in lay broken all over the floor.?

It did matter, very much.

So, getting on her knees and scooping up the broken pieces, she took her son by the hand and said, Come on son, let’s see what we can make out of what’s left. Dad meant well, of course.? But, what the son needed more than comfort was help.? He didn’t need reassurance; he needed someone to redeem what was left of the mess he’d made of his dreams.

Similarly, the Prodigal just wanted to be a hired hand in his father’s house. He “came to himself” which means a realization and remorse. He went to distant country, which literally means “the great emptiness” a flight into the ego.

Let the person hit bottom. If you keep softening the bottom, he or she will keep digging. Israel’s history is that of cyclical disobedience, defeat, degradation that culminated in oppression, slavery, loss of inheritance and status.

i.e., “I felt like I have disappointed everyone who had ever loved me.” Despair. The response: And he had. And so have I, and so have we all. Saint JP II in Dives in misericordia noted that the prodigal son is in a sense representative of every human being, indirectly touching on upon every breach of the covenant of love, every loss of grace, every sin”

The mother knew how to weep appropriately for that which ought to have been wept over, who knew how to take the past seriously, but then saying, Come, let’s pick up the pieces and see what we can make of what is left. [https://tellaboutit.blog/]

The enemy is not only after who you are, he’s also after who you are going to become.

Jesus made something beautiful from the broken pieces of a fallen world. Like our Second Reading, “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation”: the essence of this new reality is the power of God, which is made present and active in the preaching of the word of the Cross– the Gospel and the accompanying gift of the spirit, a total reordering of one’s values and priorities away from the world which means self and towards the Cross, which is the reconciling event itself.

Ah. That is the way of redemption; that is the way of seeing that there is always something that God can do even with our most broken experiences. Transformation comes in making use of all that’s gone before, even the broken parts.

The Father said to the elder son, “We must celebrate and rejoice;” Music and dancing, literally means an orchestra and dancing, symphonia in Greek, in Daniel 3:5, it means bag pipe but here is more…..a real Lawrence Welk affair! Black tie, priests even wear cufflinks.

“We must celebrate and rejoice;” is an echo of salvation history. The centurion also praised God in his reaction to Jesus’s death because sensed the messianic victor about to be vindicated by God in spite of human onslaught against him.

Robe and ring symbols are honor and authority, restoration of full sonship. No Strings Attached.

An unknown author beautifully portrays the possibilities of no-strings-attached love in this heartfelt story titled "The Rock."

"As she grew older her teenage daughter became increasingly rebellious. It culminated late one night when the police arrested her daughter for drunk driving. Mom had to go to the police station to pick her up.

They didn't speak until the next afternoon.

Mom broke the tension by giving her a small gift- wrapped box.

Her daughter nonchalantly opened it and found a little rock inside. She rolled her eyes and said, 'Cute, Mom, what's this for?'

'Read the card,' Mom instructed. Her daughter took the card out of the envelope and read it. Tears started to trickle down her cheeks. She got up and lovingly hugged her mom as the card fell to the floor.