COMING HOME TO THE FATHER'S HOUSE

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

Josh 5:9-12; Ps 34:2-7; 2 Cor 5:1-6,17-21; Lk 15:1-3,11-32

Eating of God in Freedom of Spirit

A man born into slavery, groomed and raised as a slave, has no experience and knowledge of what it means to be freeborn. The children of Israel had no experience of living in a land they could call their own or their father’s land when they were in Egypt. They were all born in Egypt as foreigners and made slaves, and many of them understood and accepted their situation to be the usual. Their story shadows our situation as sinners called to be righteous in Jesus Christ. Given our birth and upbringing in sin, we cannot even imagine what a sinless life is like. The overwhelming experience of sin in our human life made the prophet Isaiah express despair at the vision of the glory of the most holy God. “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips; and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King; the LORD of hosts!” We feel the same way about our call to holiness in life. There are two possible reactions to such an overwhelming sense of sinfulness when God reveals his sacred presence to us. The first is a feeling of total separation and otherness born of faithlessness and deep attachment to sin. The second is a feeling of faith in the mercy and goodness of God, who calls us to Himself.

The lack of faith in God and the distancing of self from him causes the closure of our hearts to him and his redeeming grace. The feeling of helplessness, which is open to the gift of faith from God, is the proper response to God’s invitation. The deep humility from our sinfulness and helplessness helps us to embrace God’s redeeming grace and love. While the first feeling and reaction makes it impossible to be saved, the second admits God’s salvation and redemptive grace. God prolonged the journey of the Israelites through the wilderness to eliminate all those who were malformed by their experience of slavery in Egypt. Their ill reception of the formation given to them in Egypt caused a structural deficit in their persons, making it impossible for them to accommodate God, who is our freedom. Those who were born of faith in the word of God, in addition to being born in slavery, were able to enter the Promised Land. We read about their entrance into the land God promised Abraham in the passage from Joshua. Their status changed when they stepped into the land that belonged to them. The Lord confirmed this to Joshua: “Today I have taken the shame of Egypt away from you.”

The change in their menu was just an external sign of the reality of their becoming freeborn. “On the morrow of the Passover, they tasted the produce of that country, unleavened bread and roasted ears of corn, that same day. From that time, from their first eating of the produce of that country, the manna stopped falling.” The manna was a wayfaring food and provided for the essentials they needed on their journey to their land. Though it was not food for slaves, it was also not a befitting food for a freeborn in the father’s house. The analogy applies to our journey through this mortal life of sin. With our profession of faith in Jesus Christ, we ceased to be slaves in the mortal house of bondage, as they were in Egypt. We are not yet in our Father’s house but wayfaring through life on earth. God requires us to maintain our profession of faith, even when our sense of moral weakness is overwhelming in the sight of God’s infinite holiness. We must never despair of God’s mercy and compassion, which are infinite perfections. To stop hoping would mean we have stopped wayfaring to our homeland of total freedom. Saint Paul affirms that we have ceased to be slaves. “For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here.”

We must never look to our human strength to please God or measure up to God’s infinite holiness, for that would cause us to despair. The whole focus must be on God. who is at work in us. He subjected us to slavery, not to destroy us, but to fashion in us the desire for freedom in a homeland that is ours. “It is all God’s work. It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation.” We are a new creation through faith in Jesus Christ, but we experience the newness and characterising freedom of the freeborn only as grace within us and not yet as fully realised in us. We still eat Jesus Christ in his sacramental presence as the Israelites ate manna and drank water from the accompanying rock in the wilderness. We will realise the spiritual freedom of children of God when we enter our Father’s House. Faith gradually turns into vision or reality as we are transformed better and better into Jesus Christ, the Promised Land. Let us be convinced of God’s work in us to convince others of God’s reconciling work within us.

The parable of the prodigal son Jesus told the Pharisees and scribes when they complained about his company with tax collectors and sinners instructs us on the importance of faith and conversion to God. The father allowed his younger son to wander away into want, misery, and affliction to reveal the glory of a freeborn in his father’s house. His suffering and afflictions brought him to his senses. “Then he came to his senses and said, “How many of my father’s paid servants have more food than they want, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your paid servants.” God created us free and loved in the Trinitarian communion. Our first parents desired ill-conceived freedom and enslaved our nature to sin and evil. Like the prodigal younger son, God did not abandon us in slavery but sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us from slavery and bring us home to the Father’s House. We are hastening to the celebration of the wonderful works of God for our redemption and restoration in grace. The Paschal celebration is almost here; let us ready ourselves in faith for the celebrations. Let us eat more of God as we liberate our minds and hearts from the entanglements of this world. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Let us pray: O God, who through your Word reconciled the human race to yourself in a wonderful way, grant, we pray, that with prompt devotion and eager faith the Christian people may hasten toward the solemn celebrations to come. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.