The Elder Son

‘The prodigal son’ is a story played at the background, and still our focus needs to be Jesus and the complaining Pharisees and Scribes. ‘This man’ they said ‘welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ Imagine Jesus gently saying to the Pharisees and Scribes it is only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because these who are called the sinners, the sick, the poor had no life, social, emotional, or religious. They are coming to life.

The words ‘you are with me always and all I have is yours,’ have lot to speak. They remind of the belongingness we have with God, a whole embracing experience of God’s love and life. We have the assurance of every blessing, grace, healing, and strength. Being at the heart of God is a home experience, where we grow, express ourselves, and learn the will of God. Knowing the heart of God is important to experience the homely freedom. No narration or description can create the bond of belonging. God desires that all may have life. God pours out life especially those who are empty, broken, abandoned and helpless. This generous pouring out of his life is what we call mercy. It produces new life and joy, causes flowering and fruition. It is only right we should celebrate and rejoice.

The elder son who only stayed with the father did not belong to him. He could not be happy with the pouring out of his love for the younger son. Though he stayed with the father, it did not cause him joy. In a home where there was freedom and joy, he functioned as someone who slaved for the father, never disobeying his orders. It was the tragedy of the Pharisees and Scribes, and the story of many of us also. It is easy to identify with the faulty character of the prodigal son, and condemn our wrong doings and romanticising the love of the father. It is also crucial and serious to reflect how we experience the belongingness to God, the freedom of being with him, experience of a home with God, learning the will of God. It is also important to rejoice seeing the pouring out of the life into those condemned, exploited, persecuted, abused and are helpless. The sonship in the house of God is to ensure life and joy to all. It is also important to have the same attitude of God in our approaches.

God has more pain when his love is not understood. Hear these parables:

As the celebrations began the father asked the servants to bring the son to the hall with new robe, sandals, and ring. The servants could not find him. He was not found in the house. Immediately they began searching everywhere to find him. After long time they found him in a place where the countrymen grew pigs. Wearing the robe, sandals, and ring, he was sharing his sorrows to the pigs. My father was a loving man, I could not understand that. I wasted everything. I am full of dirt. How can I stay in that house? I must punish myself. Having suffered the punishment, the father will be happy to receive me.

Hear another parable:

The elder son accepted whatever the father said. Immediately he set himself into action making everything ready, food, decorations, dance, wine, everything. He celebrated the return of his brother. Father was very happy with the elder son. But the elder son had arranged his men not to let the younger son and the father see another day. He did perform well.

Hear yet another parable:

The elder son made a wooden heart and a beautiful narration about the love of the father. To show that he loves the father he went to the village and asked all to love his father. He thrashed those who hesitated. 

Where do we find ourselves? Being with the father at home brings a new life to us. We can produce fruits from the new creation in us, the fruits of the new man.

Gospel

Evangelization is true to itself when its content and method are of Jesus who announced the Gospel. If evangelization is understood to be a ideological domination over others, and let 'us' go freely untouched by the way of Jesus, there is no Gospel at all. Christ can become simply a product of every christian sect if Christ does not have a catholic nature which embraces all nations, languages, and cultures. Such Christs cannot be given the status of universal saviour. They are saviours created for saving their interests.

Who really possess the Gospel are those who make it a reality in their life. The vision and way of Christ is the Gospel. It has the mind of Christ, and cannot be limited within any ideological framework. Catholicism without being 'catholicity' is not catholic at all. instead of the growth of the gospel, it is closing the gospel within preferred particular cultural, linguistic, 'traditional,' symbols. Though the gospel is lived within ones own culture, language, and traditions, it welcomes and is open to others. This preferred closedness is seen in the rejection of anything that comes outside of one's own boxes. Take the example of the reception of Laudato Si, Fratelli Tutti, or the Synod on Synodality. How much of these has come to the vision creation, action plans, formation programs... The light of the Gospel is reflected, discovered, discerned and envisioned in such guidelines. Since we don't prefer what they lay out immediately they are blamed for being worldly, social, humanist and non-godly. Even the 'church lovers' prefer to keep them away, because it challenges to come out of the boxes to the light of the Gospel today.

Proclamation and defense of faith are not about texts and sentences. Even apologetics had contextual themes and preferences. Faith is rooted in the gospel, contemplating the mind of Christ in our times guided by the Holy Spirit. We do have the richness of the theological development at every age to clarify what we believe. They help us to understand the way a time integrated the faith into their life, pain, and joys (though at times theology was lenient to conventional political interests and suppressed differences). Gospel responds the cry of a time, and Christ 'reveals' himself as the answer. The answer may not be necessarily a familiar answer that we are used to. Pope Francis often speaks of human fraternity, collaboration and dialogue as the way that we live the gospel today walking with Christ. The whole creation is seen as pilgrim companions sharing their gifts, 'inspired' by Christ in them by the grace at work in them all.

There are many lessons of the gospels from others, even from the world of other than human. Gratitude, sacrifice, and providence are of great importance in the gospel the creation lives. An anthropocentric kingdom of God is blind to the presence of the Gospel there. We cannot understand the Gospel if we cannot understand the 'other.' My way to be the way is not about the way of Jesus. Every one has a personal path that one has been walking the faith. This lived path including struggles nourish our walking companions in family and society. What we look for is the signs of the Gospel though differently lived, a life of generosity, kindness, self emptying and sacrifice. If the differences become hindrance in reading the Gospel, we do need to sincerely desire for a literacy - religious, cultural, and linguistic - in order to see the original inspirations, and the contemplative insights behind differing symbols.

Grace, not contemplated...

Christian communities have failed to have sufficient reflection on how grace or the divine life works in us.

One example is the portrayal of Jesus and Mary as violent warriors like Greek or Roman gods and goddesses. It may gladden a militant understanding of Christianity, but totally fails to understand how God loves, saves, forgives, or destroys evil. It is not simply an artistic distortion, but it closes the spiritual depth of the life of God at work in us. Instead, it represents ‘some spiritual beings’ at war, and sometime at our disposal doing favours by magical actions. We can deceive ourselves placing ourselves as spiritual by joining the side of these spiritual characters that have no connection with Bible or the teachings of Jesus. The dual spiritual powers or a duality of worlds are not a Christian vision at all.

We also need a reform to free Christian spirituality from a guilt culture. How do we teach ourselves about a responsible belonging and love? Are they given significance in our spirituality? Rather, we are centring our lives on obligations and the failings in keeping them. Jesus’ meaning of conversion and repentance were not about faults, it was about the relation to a loving and providing Father. If our spirituality is not based on such belonging (whether it be to God or to one another in a family), how can we experience a belonging to the Church. Relation to the family or to the church or to God is not primarily about fulfilling obligations, but about belonging to the family, the church or to God. Those innumerous ways of belonging are the doors to grace which shape us and sustain us. Even in moments of failures we have assurance of acceptance which a guilt culture does not offer. Guilt culture speaks heavily on reparations bringing the burden of blame. The promise of grace is not conditional, it is assured within the reality that we belong.

Unto that dust you shall return

Forty days and forty nights, He fasted and prayed in the desert.

He resisted the 'divine' promises that were false.

produce bread with a word of command

prove yourself to be the Son of God by foolish heroism, an exhibition of divine power, even supported by the Word of God

make everything under your possession by an act of worship.

After he heard the voice that he was the son of God, in fasting he resisted against the falsities of God; what god is not.

With loud cries and bitter tears, he offered his prayers and supplications to the father who would hear him. He was heard because of his faithfulness. His way of prayer and fasting was of emptying, not with any expectation of gaining. We may have everything, managing power, resources, miracles, ... but may lack Christ. That is the time we need to fast and earnestly pray for the grace of self emptying.

Self emptying is the key to get the true depth of our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. By emptying ourselves we are giving more space for God. By emptying ourselves we are getting a clarity of vision to see better the reality of the lives of our brothers and sisters in compassion and mercy. It is by self emptying we are preparing our hearts for the values of the kingdom of God.

Pope Francis reminds us this year that itis the time to sow the seeds of goodness. Often, we are overly concerned about removing what is bad. Weeding is important, but if we do not have a plan of sowing, and harvesting, it is of no use. Only by filling our lives with good things, we overcome what is evil. What exactly is this 'good' we are trying to grow within? It is the likeness of Christ that we desire for ourselves during this season. What may be the likeness that I have with Christ today? What may be the New Person of me after I put on Christ? It is a dream of Christ, a dream of the kingdom of God within ourselves.

The grain of wheat dies, but at the same time there is a process of germination. So, the self-emptying that we want to live these days is a graceful death, a life-giving death. The focus is not on our sins and failures, but on life and fruitfulness in grace. The repentance that is called for is to lay yourself down unto the ground we are from. The dust that the scripture points to is not a handful of lifeless dust, it is soil where life can grow, and bear fruit. The dust that you are is not meaningless and lifeless, the dust that you are have been given the grace to be transformed into the image of Christ. So, this season is to mould ourselves into the children of God, walking the way of Christ. The imitation of Christ is not a melancholic journey, inflicting pain and misery. Self surrender, trust, gratitude, sacrifice, generosity, and love, peacefulness are the basics of the way of Christ. Pain devoid of these cannot lead us to carry the cross.

The path does not begin at the palace of Pilate. It began from a simple family of Nazareth, from a humble birth in Bethlehem. We cannot enter into the likeness of Christ, the kingdom of God, if we are not born again. In the way of Christ, we too will have the experience of hearing the voice “you are my beloved son/ daughter in whom I have well pleased.” God’s eyes do not look for the sins we carry, they see the life that can be filled in our emptiness and brokenness. Rise up from the dust that we are, be close to Him in trust and hope, receive strength and guidance from him, and gradually, from one degree to another we will be transformed into the image of Jesus, even to a self-emptying and life giving dying, and rising to the fullness of life. Unto that dust you must return.