A Reflection for the Saturday of the Second Week of Lent

Today’s gospel presents the classic parable of the Prodigal Son. What I love most about this parable is the fact that even before the son returns home, the father is already out there running to meet him. What a moving image of God’s superabundant love. God’s grace always goes before us, drawing us home when we are faraway and lost. The Hillbilly Thomists, a bluegrass band of Dominican friars, recently released their second album. My favorite song on the album is “Lead me by the hand,” and the lyrics beautifully capture the image of the wayfaring son:

“Nightfall this way comes. I am tired and far from home…

Seems like a perfect night, if only I had a light within

and without, all around. Master, I want to see.

So won’t you lead me by the hand…”

When we are lost, God “leads us by the hand.” When we are confused and cannot see the way forward, He lets us see with the eyes of faith. The song concludes:

“Someone this way comes,

They say he’s the one who’ll lead me home.”

Like the father in the parable, God is always going out to meet us where we are to lead us home.

While it is easy to see ourselves as the Prodigal Son, Ven. Fulton Sheen places us in the drama of this parable as playing the roles of both father and son. In a 1936 radio lecture entitled “The Return from Exile,” Sheen likens Western Civilization to the Prodigal Son, and the Father’s House to the Church. Sheen says, “No other truth than the spiritual can save our civilization.” Sheen was delivering this talk at a time when Communism tempted the West with the promise of a heaven on earth. Sheen makes clear that “no civilization can be good unless it serves and loves God.” Similarly, in our day, when politicians promise hope and healing, we must remember that “Spiritual regeneration must condition social reconstruction.” Like the Prodigal Son, we as a society must return to the Father’s House which is the Church’s life of grace. Yet as members of the Father’s House, as baptized Catholics, we have the duty to go out and meet wandering wayfarers and welcome them home. Sheen says, “Each Catholic therefore is Christ in his little world. Our Lord has no other feet with which to go about doing good than ours; He has no other cheeks to turn to those who preach class warfare than our own; He has no other lips to teach those who sit in the superstition of the Gentiles than our own.” The parable of the Prodigal Son thus offers us a twofold call: firstly, to receive God’s mercy and return to Him, and secondly, to seek out and bring home our brothers and sisters in Christ.