Returning to the (Good) News

In today’s Gospel, the Lord shares with us again His treasured parable of the Prodigal Son.  This story has been contemplated and explicated in the Church from so many angles that we think we know it as familiarly as we know our own life.  But this begs the question of how well we know our own life!

When I went to Florida to have the surgery on my jaw, in both the pre-and post-operative period I avoided seeking out any news of the outside world.  I had no idea whatsoever what was going on nationally or internationally for about three and a half weeks.  It was important to me to focus on what I had to face, and I conceived of my time away from Queen of Peace as a sort of medical-spiritual retreat.

I did, however, ask for the daily and national newspapers to be saved during my absence, so that I could read them and catch up on things upon my return.  Thus while I was away, the news of the world was literally piling up in my rectory breezeway.

It should come as no surprise that I did not feel at the time as if I was missing anything of lasting value (endlessly stalled budget debates, local-tragedy-from-somewhere-else--as-national-info-tainment, etc.).  Even now---as I make my way each day through the layers of old news which was made and recorded concurrently with my medical leave---I am amazed at how little of present interest I am able to find in that printed heap.  So much of what passes for news is mere ephemera.

But this experience brings me back to Christ’s parable.  The prodigal son “set off to a distant country” in part to live the illusion of a totally detached life.  The “squandering of an inheritance” and “living a life of dissipation” do in fact (de)form the son’s new life as one severed from the life and love which were his origin. 

The dramatic center of the parable is surely the father’s memory of---and hopeful expectation for---his son.  Only the father is able to hold in his heart the reunion of his son’s past and future.  No sooner does the father see the son “while he was still a long way off,” than before we know it the son is showered with gifts---the finest robe, sandals and a ring, a slaughtered calf for a celebration.  The younger son apparently is speechless, because we hear no more of him in the story. 

And what of the older son’s confrontation with his father?  The elder brother recounts the “old news” of his service to his father, seemingly felt and lived as a slavish obedience to one perceived as a stingy master. The father silences this one-sided reporting by the assurance: “My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours”---including a brother who was “dead” and is now “alive.”  Ultimately it is only the father who sees this bigger picture and better news.  Only he can sponsor and extend the all-embracing invitation to join the happy ending.

The season of Lent requires us, so to speak, to “catch up on the news” we missed.  In the communion of saints, there are no detached lives, only distinct ones.  And our distinctiveness is grounded in and shaped by our life in the Father’s household.  Whether it is a worldly retreat from reality or a spiritual retreat deeper into reality, none of us is spared the purgatorial---which is to say perfecting---conversation with the One who is our loving origin and living, lasting inheritance.  The Good News is not to be found in what is written in piled up newspapers of the past but in the conversions and reunions of today, this day of embracing and being embraced in the Father’s undivided and prodigal present.