From Me, to We, to Unity

Having spent most my church life in the pews listening to homilies instead of giving homilies, I know all too well that moment of disappointment when you realize that the B team preacher is giving the homily today.  To those experiencing this moment of disappointment now, let me start off by saying, “I’m sorry.” 

But, enough about me, let us turn our focus to the parable of the lost son, better known as the parable of the prodigal son.  Since this is a familiar parable for most of us, we need to use our imagination to see ourselves in this story for this story to come alive.  So let us try on for size the characters of this parable of the father and his two sons to see which character most fits our own character.  

Let us begin with seeing if our own character is like the character of … the Younger Prodigal Son. We younger sons decide to do things our way.  While we never come out and say it, the greed in our hearts screams out that we wish our father would hurry up and die so we can have our inheritance that we have coming to us.  We go off in our own direction, leaving behind our family and those relationships that are meant to be the most meaningful, only to pursue shallow relationships.  We indulge in every kind of physical desire, being promiscuous, getting drunk, spending all the money we have in a wasteful way, only at the end of it all, to feel broke, hungry, homeless and lost.  When we finally come to our senses to realize that life with the father is much better than life apart from the father, we then turn away from what was killing us and turn toward what gives us life.  We then make the humbling journey to return to where we should have never departed from.  For some of us, maybe this character of the younger prodigal son is a little too close for comfort.   

Still there are others among us whose own character doesn’t fit the character of the younger prodigal son.  So, let us turn our attention next to the character of … the older son.  Those among us like the older son shouldn’t be so quick to step up on a pedestal as being better than the younger son, because even though we older children never left home, we have become lost also.  That’s right, we older children have got lost in an internal twisted road of resentment, jealousy and anger.  If we go too far down this twisted internal road, it can prove to be deadly as we saw with the world’s first older son, Cain.  While we older children don’t come out and say it, we wish the father’s younger child was dead so all the father’s attention and favor was on us.  We are envious and get mad when others receive attention and blessings.  We are quick to judge others, presuming them guilty even though we don’t know all the circumstances of their lives.  If we’re like the older son, we mistakenly view ourselves as better than others.  Who knows, maybe even the A team preacher sometimes is tempted to feel this way. 

With each rule we follow and each minute of work we do, we feel more and more entitled to the father’s attention and favor.  We may even we buy into the illusion of viewing ourselves as self-made persons when the reality is we stayed at home our whole lives constantly being surrounded with the blessings of the Father, taking them for granted.  We find that the most important and obvious realities we’ve become accustomed to, like our constant blessings, are often the hardest realities for us to see.  When compared with our own character, maybe this older son character is a better fit than we’d like to admit.  

Still, there are others of us who realize that we’re every bit as much the older son as we are the younger son.  We can see how both the older son and the younger son are all too often selfishly focused on me, me, me.  Whether we self-identify with the prodigal younger son or the resentful older son, God wants from us to repent and to turn away from our focus on me, and instead to turn toward our compassionate and merciful father. 
When we turn toward the father, our focus moves from me to the we of community.  As we turn to the father, we realize that the time has come for each of us to claim our true vocation, to be more like the father, to join with the father in going out into the world to embrace God’s children and to extend God’s mercy and compassion to them.  The father wants us to be a part of his fullness in this way. 

Each of us are called to be more like the merciful and compassionate father who wakes up every morning hoping that today is the day that our child comes home.  So, who is this person in our own lives who we’ve been pained to watch walk farther and farther away God and from us?  Think for a moment about this person, this person that God wants us to wake up every morning hoping and praying that today is the day this child of God returns to him and to us.  If today is the day this child returns, God wants us to exercise our spiritual parenthood by joyfully running out to meet them, wrapping our arms around them like the father does, welcoming this child home without asking them any questions and without wanting anything from them in return.   

When we celebrate this child’s homecoming, we begin to try on for size the character of the compassionate and merciful father.  We begin to claim this spiritual parenthood as our own, when we let go of acting like a bouncer who stops those considered undesirable from entering the father’s house.  We instead take on the role of an usher who shows God’s children to their seats in the father’s house, seats that were paid for by someone else.  Let us always remember this truth that our seats in the father’s house have been paid for by someone else and that someone else is Jesus.  When we accept this truth, we step more fully into the character of the father.   

We then see through the eyes of our spiritual parenthood that being in communion with God and each other is so much more than just being in the proximity of one another and being civil with one another.  Exercising our spiritual parenthood is more than being on the outside with each other and just being we in a surface level kind of way.  Stepping into our spiritual parenthood means we move our focus from we to unity.  More than anything else, the father desires this unity.  God desires a unity that continues to draw us inside to experience greater intimacy by becoming closer to God and one another, so that we all may be as one as God is one.   

The father and his two sons teach us that while there are different ways to get lost, there is only one way to be found and welcomed back home and that is through God.  Our God, who is the best of teachers.  Our God, who doesn’t just tell us with mere words about coming out to be with us and welcome us home.  Our God, shows us by giving us The Word made flesh who comes out to meet us and welcome us back home.  God, in the person of Jesus, came out from heaven to be with us, to let us experience God’s mercy and compassion and he didn’t stop there.  He took all the sin of the world onto Himself and left this sin behind him as he returned to the Father’s house.  With what joy the father must have ran out to embrace and kiss his son who was dead and has come to life again.   

In a few moments, when we encounter Jesus in the Eucharist, may we be like the father who joyfully comes out to welcome him and embrace him in our very selves.  For God wants to make his home in us during our journey on this earth and to be sharers in this welcoming back home to the Father’s house.  It is the quest for this communion that defines the mission of the church and each of its members. You see, Catholicism is not about me.  Catholicism is not just about we.  Catholicism is about unity.  We seek communion — unity — with all.  We seek communion not only with God, but with one another as well.  Since we are all made in the image of God, we realize our full potential as human persons by being in communion with God and each other.   

We are called to this communion in church, on the campus, in the office and at home.  In our own lives this week, we each have ways that are uniquely our own in how we can exercise our spiritual parenthood to help one of God’s sons and daughters.  Let us ask God in prayer this week to speak into our hearts how he wants us to help his sons and daughters encounter God and to welcome them home to experience the father’s merciful, compassionate and loving embrace.  May we then be the ones to show them that God comes out to meet them and they are always welcomed back home no matter how lost they have become.  At the end of the day, what God wants is what we should also want, for us all to be gathered together in his home at a celebration for his son.  So that each of us fully experience this joyous celebration, may we move the focus of our lives from me, to we, to unity.B