The parable of the Prodigal Son is an absolute treasure that our Lord bestowed upon His Children. It is said that if the entirety of Holy Scripture was lost to a massive fire and run out of the memories of God’s people, we could learn everything we needed to know about our relationship with God from this one simple parable of a Loving Father and His two sons.
While there is so much nectar that we can gleam from this incredible parable, I want to draw your attention to how this story begins. We heard in the Gospel how the younger of two sons made a demand of His Father saying: “Give me the portion of goods that falls to me”. The Father divided to them His livelihood, and the younger son went off to a far country and wasted his possessions in prodigal living.
I had a fascinating discussion about these two sentences with Fr. Peter from Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, because in its original Greek, there is more to this story than meets the eye. The word translated into English as “possessions” or “inheritance” is from the Greek word “οὐσία”, which carries with it something much deeper than simply asking his dad for money.
Oὐσία in Greek Philosophy and also in Christian Theology is the word used for “essence” or “what makes us who we are”. Being made in His Image and Likeness, God bestowed upon mankind’s essence attributes that made us higher than all other beings in creation. This inheritance from the Father gives us the ability to reason, and the faculty of speech. We have an intellect. We have self-will and determination. We have the ability to freely love. All of these are what makes us different than the animals. Our Divine inheritance is what makes us who we are!
But what have we done with this Divine Inheritance? Last night at the Vespers Service, The Church called for us to sing a hymn from the Lenten Triodion that answers this question. The first part of the hymn says:
“I, a wretched man, hide my face in shame: I have squandered the riches my Father gave to me. I went to live with senseless beasts. I sought their food and hungered, for I had not enough to eat…”
What good have we as human beings done upon the earth with our Divine Inheritance? On a macro level, Mankind went from walking and conversing with God in the Garden of Eden to a “Far Country”. We went from paradise to a world full of war, natural disasters, and sicknesses. What was once given to us as an existence meant for eternal life…we squandered and brought death in the world.
On a micro level, Mankind went from having control over His body, to his body having control over him. The hymn above alludes to this. When we squander our Divine inheritance, we truly do live with (and like) senseless beasts!
St. Paul alluded to this in His Epistle to the Corinthians, when he urges us to take back control of our bodies! “All things are lawful for me but not all things are helpful…I will not be brought under the power of any.” I can do anything I want, but not everything is beneficial…and I will not let anything take control over me, St. Paul says.
Our Divine Inheritance wasn’t given to us to indulge ourselves. It wasn’t given to us for sexual immorality. It wasn’t given to us to inflict pain or harm on others or on creation. Our Inheritance was given to us so that we could learn to “Love He Who Bestowed It Upon Us.”
This preparatory period of Great Lent offers us a chance to find ourselves again. In two weeks, we will be reminded in the hymns of how we, like our ancestors, stand outside the gates of Eden. We find ourselves as orphans, lost in a sea of misery and darkness that our own sins have caused in this life. But when we humble ourselves, and take an honest assessment of our lives as Christians, we are reminded of this parable of the Prodigal Son. We realize that our life doesn’t have to be like this. We begin to see with clarity what happens when we take ourselves away from the presence of God, and spend our time out in the midst of the world in a “Far Off Country”.
Dearest Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the time for repentance is now. Our journey back to the Father, with our heads bowed down low in humility, having squandered the life that we have been given…needs to start today.
The second part of that hymn from Vespers describes what our humble state of mind needs to be as we start this journey of repentance:
“Yet I will now arise! I will return to my compassionate Father! He will accept my tears as I kneel before Him crying: “In your tender love for all men, receive me as one of your servants and save me!”
What is it that awaits those who return home to our Lord? A Fatherly Embrace…and a celebration by our God Who loves us…Who came to this world to seek and save the lost…Who throws a party for all of those who, despite all of the ways in which we have squandered our “inheritance”…Who receives all of those who wake up and realize that it is better to be in the embrace of a Father, than in the clutches of sin.
May our Lord give us the strength necessary to begin our journey back to Him!