“He came to himself and
said… ‘I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I
have sinned against heaven and before you.’” St. Luke 15:17-18
At first, of course, he blamed
everyone else. We would do the same,
sitting there by the pigs, our bellies gnawing with hunger. It had been quite a ride for a while: sharp
clothes, fancy meals, all the wine he could drink, fast women. He was on top of the world, a friend on every
corner. No rules, no boundaries, no
regrets. How in the world could it all
have come to pieces so quickly?
He blamed his parents, of course.[1] Half the inheritance--they’d promised that’s
what it amounted to, but it sure didn’t seem like very much. And what about that responsible brother of
his—if he’d have come to mind the books, well it wouldn’t have all slipped away
so quickly. He blamed all those who
called themselves his friends, and sponged on his good nature, all those who’d
tricked him into schemes and promised to pay him back in a month’s time. Who wouldn’t blame a thief—the dealer with
the weighted dice, the pickpocket who snatched the sack from his coat, the women
who left his bed before dawn. It was the
fault of tailors who made shiny clothes that wore thin too quickly, tavern men
who overcharged for cheap food. And this
wretched famine—who could have seen it coming.
This master he was serving—surely he could pay more. Surely he could find some work with more
dignity. He cursed his lot. He cursed his enemies. He cursed life itself, and then stared back
at the pigs, and he would have climbed down into the trough beside them if he
could.
He was miserable, of course. But there’s a kind of steadfastness that can
come with misery, especially when we are so certain it’s all someone else’s
fault.
In his mind he was the victim,
the martyr, the hero even. He was
everything but the sinner, the narcissist, the fool that the rest of the world could
see so clearly. In her poem about the
prodigal, Elizabeth Bishop described it this way:
The sunrise glazed the barnyard mud
with red
the
burning puddles seemed to reassure.
And
then he thought he almost might endure
his exile yet another year
or more…
Carrying a bucket along a
slimy board,
he felt the bats'
uncertain staggering flight,
his
shuddering insights, beyond his control,
touching him. But it took
him a long time
finally
to make up his mind to go home.[2]
What made the difference? Jesus said that there in the mud, his belly
growling, “he came to himself.” That’s a
weighty phrase if there ever was one.
The prodigal came to see himself as he really was. He reexamined his life, weighed the sorry
deeds of the past. His conscience, at
long last was awakened, and he saw himself for what he truly was: a sinner, a
person deeply in need of forgiveness and reconciliation with those whom he had
wronged.
In
the recovery community, they call it “hitting rock bottom.” It doesn’t just mean coming to the end of
your resources or making your life a living hell. People can stay there for quite a long time
before anything changes. Hitting rock
bottom means coming to yourself, taking responsibility, admitting your sin, resolving
to live differently.
The
theological term is compunction, the pricking of the conscience, which is
awakened to life, that shuddering awareness that I have done wrong and now must
do something about it. Compunction, we
believe is the work of God’s grace. It
is the first step in the healing of the wounded soul.
But
those stirrings must be recognized, affirmed and put into action. This is becoming contrite. The contrite person recognizes his or her own
fault. He is not merely the victim of
other’s cruelty. The excuses don’t tell
the whole story. “I have sinned against
heaven and before you,” the prodigal says.
The just man, Saint Ambrose wrote, “begins by blaming himself.”[3] The prodigal’s disrespectful and impatient
demand for the inheritance, his wastefulness—these, he says, are offenses
against his father, to be sure. But he
has also sinned “before heaven.” He has sinned against God, who has given him
the knowledge of good and evil and the freedom to do what is right. The prodigal recognizes this, detesting his
sin, and he resolves to avoid the same mistakes again. He wants to make things right, and so he
steps up from the mud, and he turns his face toward his father’s house.
And
of course, what the prodigal finds there astonishes him. His father doesn’t wait imperiously to
receive his groveling. He runs out, forsaking respectability, to throw his arms
around him, and welcome him back with celebration. The prodigal confesses his son, but before he
can announce the plan for restitution, the Father showers him with signs of
peace and favor. There must be a ring
for his finger, shoes on his feet, a festal robe, the fatted calf. There is such joy, Jesus tells us, for all
who repent and return to the Lord.
When
we come to ourselves, God shows us His true heart, His profound love. “A broken and contrite heart,” the Psalmist
tells us, “he will not despise.”[4] “LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger
and abounding in steadfast love.”[5] He stretches wide His arms, and assures us of
His forgiveness and restoration to the company of His faithful people. “This son of mine was dead and is alive
again; he was lost and is found.”
But
the Father can only receive the contrite.
It is possible for us to remain crouched among the pigs, despising God’s
goodness, unwilling to admit our fault.
We can resist the pricks of the conscience, bound fast and so terribly
alone. That’s of course, where the elder
son finds himself at the close of the story.
To be sure, he’s well dressed and he’s had plenty to eat. He doesn’t smell of the pigs, but confidently
looks over his own fields. But make no mistake
about it, he’s as lost and dead as his spendthrift brother ever was. He has not yet come to himself, and until he
does, he will never know for himself the true extent of the Father’s love.
And
what of us? As some of you will know,
the preachers usually suggest that you see yourself as either the prodigal or
the elder son—the black sheep or the goody-two shoes. I don’t think that’s entirely useless. But I’m pretty sure that God wants to get a
little more out of this story than a moralistic lesson about being a little
nicer to your kid sister who’s still out in Monterrey trying to figure out what
to do with her life.
Every
one of us is the prodigal. There is
none, righteous, no not one. Read the
commandments for yourself. Examine your
conscience. We have all chosen our own
way, and wandered far too long in a land that is waste. We have all wasted far too much time blaming
others for our misfortunes. There are only two abodes, the pigsty and the
Father’s embrace. The question staring us each in the face today
is “how long it will take you to make up your mind to go home?”
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