Fourth Sunday of Lent
“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
The welcome which appears in today’s Gospel of the Prodigal Son is the grace of repentance. We received it in our baptism into Christ. There we were welcomed into the unfolding mystery of God at work in us. The word, “synergy” is helpful to describe that working: ‘joint activity,’ ‘combined energies.’ It is “the energy of the Holy Spirit that permeates the energy of human beings and conforms them to Christ.” The Church Father, Origen, spoke of it as “this Word of God, …present to remove the earth from the souls of each of you in order that your fountain may flow.”
This energy of the Holy Spirit seeks our cooperation, our free response, the exercise of our faith. The door into this “co-energy” is the owning of our sin. Without this, we cannot know the grace of repentance.
We are given more. The grace of repentance allies us with Christ in His work of redeeming the world. In the face of human sin, in our own little sphere of influence, we can participate in Christ’s redemptive love. St. Paul puts it this way in Colossians: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.”
Think of repentance for sin as a handle to open a door into a new dimension of our lives. We have sinned because we willed to do so; now we repent because we will turn from it. A good example in daily life: ‘I’m sorry, I was wrong. Please forgive me!’
When we refuse to acknowledge our sin and admit it into consciousness, we deny ourselves the beautiful grace of repentance which is a “profound change of the whole person as a result of which he or she begins to think, judge and arrange their whole life under the impulse of that holiness and charity of God.” Lent is the time we seek to know better the source of this grace, the Easter mystery. We desire this. But it calls for realism and patience as we hear from Fr. Zossima, in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov:
“Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don’t be too frightened even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed, and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage….But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting further from you goal instead of nearer to it – at that very moment I predict you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”
The love we seek to enter into is the very love of Christ. If we are to live it, we must allow our loving God to take us beyond our sins into his love for us.
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
Posted in Articles for Lent, Daily Reflections, Lenten Resources