A Chapter Conference for the Friday of the Second Week of Lent

+ At Lauds tomorrow morning we shall sing in the Benedictus Antiphon: “Vadam ad patrem meum, et dicam ei: fac me sicut unum ex mercenariis tuis.” (I will go to my father and I will say unto him: Father make me as one of Thy servants.) This antiphon serves, of course, our contemplation of the Holy Gospel of the Saturday of the Second Week of Lent, the Gospel parable of the prodigal (or two) sons. (cf. Luke 15:11-32)

Let us consider something of this parable – perhaps one of the best known of all the Gospel parables, and certainly one of the most beautiful – so as to prepare the prayer and contemplation of the morrow.

We know the plot: a younger son is foolish and leaves his father’s house only to squander his inheritance in a life that is gravely sinful to the extent that he is reduced to feeding – of all things for a Jew! – pigs. Eventually he comes to his senses and, knowing full well the evil he has done, begs (as in the Benedictus antiphon) simply to be allowed to be a servant in his father’s household. And yet – to the chagrin of his somewhat self-righteous ever-faithful older brother – his father, with unprecedented compassion and utterly festal joy, restores him to unimpeded sonship, chiding his eldest son for his lack of understanding, mercy, love and joy at the return of one “who was dead and who has come to life, who was lost and is now found.”

This parable provides so much for our contemplation!

At Matins in the morning St Ambrose will himself ponder the younger son’s going off to a far land: “What is a more distant journey than to go out of one’s self, to be separated not by vast regions, but by morals; to be cut off not by earthly distance, but by the pursuits of the soul; and to be, as it were, divorced from the society of the saints by the burning chasm of earthly lust? He who has separated himself from Christ is indeed an exile from his fatherland; he is a citizen of this world.”

My brothers: it may be that we ourselves have wandered in these regions. We may have known the shame and self-loathing of being unworthy sons of the Father, of being barely able to hope for a welcome home, even as a hired servant. And it is most probably the case that we count amongst our friends and loved ones some of the household of faith who currently find themselves thus, in a self-imposed exile.
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Yet, by God’s grace, by the prayers and sacrifices of others and through the merits of the saints, we have been freely and graciously given the Father’s understanding, mercy and love and have entered once again into the joy of the Communion of Saints. How often have we been welcomed home thus!

This unmerited grace should produce in us at least two dispositions. Firstly, profound humility and a disposition of gratitude in the depths of our souls. There should be no room in us for the pride and lack of compassion displayed by the older son, no matter who the sinner or what the sin.

Pride can certainly be a danger for us. Living the coenobitical life should and does protect us from at least some of the sinful regions in which we might otherwise wander.

Nevertheless, whilst thanking Almighty God for this particular grace of our monastic vocation, and whilst abiding in the humility which our past sins demand, we must never, ever forget the doctrine that Our Lord teaches in this parable: that the reality of the forgiveness of sins and of the restoration to sonship in the Household of God is of the essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Full stop.
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In our times some in the Church, and often perversely many “citizens of the world” far beyond it for whom the Church’s moral teachings are utterly repugnant, cannot abide this doctrine. Evangelical forgiveness seems to involve too much of a risk. Or it threatens their position as ‘elder sons.’ To those of the world it is incomprehensible.

Through fear or even through narcissism, rather than rejoicing at a lost or dead brother being found or coming back to life, the stances of some – even Church authorities at times – would deny this fundamental Gospel teaching by almost rewriting the parable so as to have the prodigal son sent back to the pigs! Too many sinners have been scandalised – literally, in the sense of the original Greek skandalon (a stumbling block) – when they have encountered this and have been prevented thereby from returning to the Father’s house, only to be driven further away into greater sin.

We must resist this evisceration of the Gospel with all our might and with all the spiritual and other means at our disposal. If sinners may not be restored to unimpeded sonship in the Father’s house, our preaching and teaching is, to borrow St Paul’s phrase, nothing less than “in vain.” (cf. 1 Cor. 15:14)

Secondly, this parable should give rise to a spiritual – indeed an apostolic – zeal for sinners in our lives; particularly, as monks, in our lives of prayer and penance. For whose return have I offered my Lenten penances in these past days? What straying soul can I help to win back to the Father’s house in the remaining days of Lent? When I rise ridiculously early on a cold day to go to my choir stall, for whom does my fidelity to the Work of God plead before the Father of all grace?

Yes, tomorrow’s Holy Gospel gives us all of this, and more, to ponder and digest.

Saint Benedict opens the Holy Rule with the call:

“Hearken, my son, to the precepts of the Master and incline the ear of thy heart; freely accept and faithfully fulfil the instructions of a loving father, that by the labour of obedience thou mayest return to him from whom thou hast strayed by the sloth of disobedience.” (Rule, Prologue)
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In responding to this call, in entering the “school of the Lord’s service,” (Rule, Prologue) we enter into the loving, forgiving, restorative embrace of the Father. My brothers, let our lives be nothing less than witnesses to and apostles of this fundamental evangelical reality so that others too may come to be enfolded in the loving embrace of the Father. + 

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