4th Sunday of Lent (C)

Without a doubt, the parable we have just heard is the most famous parable Jesus ever preached – that of the Prodigal Son. It has captured hearts and inspired imaginations down the centuries, and it speaks ever so powerfully to us today. Part of what makes this parable widely compelling comes from how easy it is to see ourselves in any of its characters: the son who squanders his inheritance, the father who forgives, or the brother who resents both. As we see ourselves in the characters, we can also read particular sins into the very center of the narrative. Whatever the younger son may have done to waste what his father gave him can easily stand for our own sins or the sins of our loved ones. 

The sins from our own experience that we read into this parable, however, tend not to be the superficial or inconsequential ones but, on the contrary, those that are deep and damaging. We don’t compare the sin of the prodigal son to the little white lie we told when we were twelve; nor do we imagine ourselves as the merciful father forgiving someone who never paid us back for lunch. No, this parable cuts deeper. It evokes serious sin. Sin that has been eating away at us for some time. Sin that seems improbable or even impossible to forgive. 

Serious sin takes many forms. We traditionally identify seven ‘capital’ or ‘deadly’ sins. Above the rest in the world today stands the sin of lust, in particular, through the temptations toward unchastity and infidelity that are found in ever-greater quantity on the internet. These temptations exist in a multitude of media that do not require a description here; and they present a threat to us all. Marriages long established and otherwise happy find themselves suddenly hanging on by a thread. Engaged and dating couples, longing to give themselves entirely to each other now question whether such an exclusive commitment is possible for them or for their partner. Singe people, as well, often dejected by a spirit of loneliness, turn inward and to their own gratification instead of striving to find their desire for relationship fulfilled in another. Even children, too, are being exposed at a younger and younger age to material online of a more and more explicit nature. In just the past year, several priests have made national headlines after their own sins of unchastity were brought into the light. The reality is, people of every walk of life, men and women, young and old, know the struggle; and perhaps it is a struggle you’re fighting yourself, or one that you’re watching a loved one fight, even at home. And perhaps that is why the parable of the Prodigal Son is powerful for you today. 

The Archbishop has asked that the Archdiocese undertake a three-year initiative called “Safe-Haven Sunday” to speak about this difficult issue that troubles many and offer to them the Church’s help. Please know that I do so this morning, in the words of Paul, not counting anyone’s trespasses against them but, as an ambassador of Christ, striving to proclaim to all those who suffer the message of reconciliation (cf. 2 Cor. 5:19). 

I also speak to you this morning not feigning to rest on my own laurels but relying almost entirely on the wisdom of Dietrich von Hildebrand, one of the great Catholic spiritual authors of the 20th century. Change of any kind requires building good habits, accountability, and honesty. What von Hildebrand lays out for us in his book, Transformation in Christ, are the necessary spiritual foundations that we must have for any of us to become in the words of Paul in today’s Second Reading, “a new creation” in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Elsewhere Paul exhorts us to “put away the old self of your former way of life” and “put on the new self” (Eph. 4:24). The question arises, how do we get from here to there? How do we become a new creation in Christ? von Hildebrand identifies a number of necessary conditions for such a change, and each is applicable to whatever kind of change we need to undergo for ourselves. I would like to focus on three of these conditions and speak to how they are useful both in general to all of us striving for holiness and in particular for those engaged in the battle for purity and chastity in the digital age. 

First, von Hildebrand says that for us to be changed into this new creation, we first and foremost need a “readiness to change” (9). He says, “A strong desire must fill us to become different beings” (10), as he goes on to describe it: “We should be like soft wax, ready to receive the imprint of the features of Christ” (13). What can give us this desire to change? Ultimately, it is a gift from God, a divine stirring within us that moves us toward conversion. What today’s Gospel teaches us is that this gift of the desire to change often comes at the moment of utter desperation. It is only when the prodigal son is, literally, in the filth of his sin that his heart awakens to return to the father. When the fleeting glamor of sin has dissipated, then the son can recognize the miserable state in which his sin has left him, and there enters the possibility of his conversion. Once our pride has humbled us, then we are capable of being ready to change. Temptations toward unchastity typically begin as a small ember and quickly turn into a ravaging fire and leaves those enthralled in a heap of ash. Yet the hope of today’s Gospel is that the heap of ash, or a pile of filth, is a privileged place of God’s grace that moves a person, however fallen, toward the change of conversion. 

Second, von Hildebrand adds that after a readiness to change, we also need contrition. He writes, “Without a radical breach with our past sins we can evince no readiness to be transformed by God” (31). And that breach takes the form of contrition, which “implies that we not only deplore the sin we committed but condemn it expressly, denouncing, as it were, our allegiance to it” (32). The prodigal must get up and go to his father; he must leave his sinful life behind; he must return to his father’s house and, in great humility, request to be admitted once again. So must anyone who desires to change. Contrition leads us to the Father, to say to him that we have sinned, not that he would condemn us and cast us out from his presence, but that he would embrace us as his own and rejoice that we have again been found. It can be embarrassing to bring the same sins over and over again to confession. What Christ reveals to us in this parable, however, is that the Father’s mercy is infinite and that the Father always looks out the distance for us, waiting for us to respond to his invitation to return, that he may forgive us once again. It does not matter how many times. After the banquet, the prodigal could have done the exact same thing he did before, and the father still would have forgiven him, as our Father will always forgive us whenever we run to him. 

Finally, von Hildebrand teaches that the “next decisive step” for us to undergo transformation in Christ is for us to have self-knowledge. “So long as anyone is ignorant of [their] defects and of their real nature, all [their] endeavor (be it ever so laudable) to overcome those defects will end in failure” (41). What we need, says von Hildebrand, is not psychoanalysis but the self-knowledge that comes from an authentic relationship with God: “It is only in recognition of our metaphysical situation, only in awareness of our destiny and our vocation that we can become truly cognizant of ourselves” (44). In knowing Christ, we come to know ourselves. By inviting the light of Christ to enable us to see who we are, we discover what lies beneath the surface of our sin and why we are pulled toward this sin or that, in these circumstances or under these conditions. Such self-knowledge thus requires, on the way to transformation, that we make a serious effort to turn away from sin on account of who we know ourselves to be. As he leaves his sin behind, the prodigal son says, “I shall get up and go to my father”. He remembers that he is the son of his father. We too are sons and daughters of the Father, adopted through his Son, Jesus Christ. In coming to know ourselves in the light of Christ, we see how our sin does not – cannot – determine who we are. Rather, Christ alone determines who we are and gives our life a new and decisive direction. 

For any of us to set aside our former life and be transformed into a new creation in Christ these are the necessary steps along that path: a readiness to change, contrition for our sins to leave the past behind, and self-knowledge that we are sons and daughters of God who calls us out of darkness into light. There is no sin whatsoever that would make such a transformation impossible, for there is nothing dead that Christ cannot raise back to life, and no one lost that cannot once again be found.