Fourth Sunday of Lent

Praise be to Jesus Christ

Were you able to spend time in God’s grace last week?

How is your Lent?

May God bless and give peace to all of you who are living out Lent obediently.

Have you kept the note with two goals you have set for yourself when Lent started?  Let us reflect on the goals and refresh our attitude.  When you reflect it is also a process of penitence.  

Lent is a time to repent. 

Repenting give us time of blessing with God as we avoid bad habits and do good deeds.  During this time, our faith can mature and move closer to God.  

Today’s gospel is a parable of the prodigal son.  This story clearly reveals how to repent.  Based on the gospel, Rembrandt gave us his monumental painting of the Return of the Prodigal Son.  

In the painting, we see the younger son.  He has a shaved head and is wearing ragged clothes.  His sandals are worn and his left foot is injured.  It shows the difficult life he had lived since his departure from his father.  

The younger son took his share of inheritance and left abroad.  He had lived a life of immorality and lost all his wealth.  When he lost everything and became hungry, he realized his father’s affluence: “How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger.”  (Luke 15:17)

The son decides to return to his father and this shows how much he atones.   When the father saw his son, he ran to him as he hugged and kissed.  He ordered his servants: “Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.  Then let us celebrate with a feast.”  (Luke 15:22-23)

In the painting, we are able to see father’s love for his son.  His face had aged from the loss of his son; his eyes had lost focus.  He had spent a long time mourning as he waited for his son’s return and his grief shows in the aged eyes.  

Father’s right hand is feminine and his left is masculine.  They represent both mother and father’s love and forgiveness for the son.  Father’s image represents our God of love who patiently waits and forgives us.  

We also see the older son’s eyes with displeasure; he is not happy.    He tells his father, he does not understand why father forgives and embraces a good for nothing rascal.  His lighter left hand which represents love and forgiveness is held firm by his dark right hand that embodies hatred and anger.  If the second son is the prodigal son outside of the house, then the older son is the prodigal son within the house.  

Older son angrily speaks to his father: “Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.  But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.”

But the father speaks to his ungrateful older son with love.  He coaxes his older son who refuses to enter the house: “My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.  But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”  (Luke 15: 31-32)

God is love.  He patiently waits and forgives us; within Him we can walk the path of repentance.  

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Lent.  Let us relook at the note we prepared at the start of Lent and reaffirm our commitment to repent.  

Let us meditate for a moment.