We are just past the half-way point in Lent.\u00a0Jesus is heading to Jerusalem for the last time, and Easter is a light on the horizon, because we live Lent with Easter in mind. The message for this Sunday is\u00a0on the lips of St. Paul in today\u2019s Second Reading: \u201cWe implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.\u201d<\/p>\n
In today’s First Reading God tells Joshua that the forty years that Israel spent in the desert, due to rebelling against God, are over.\u00a0The Israelites have just entered the Promised Land, and for the first time in forty years they eat the Passover meal using the food of the Promised Land instead of manna, a fine powder God gave them each day in the desert to bake into bread: \u201ca fine, flake-like thing, fine as hoarfrost on the ground\u201d (Exodus 16:14). Today’s Responsorial Psalm summarizes well what they are feeling: taste and see the goodness of the Lord. It is like a cool drink after a long and hot day.\u00a0The Israelites spent forty years in the desert, suffering and toiling, to reconcile with God after they mistrusted him and complained against him. They have finished their time of penance, which is why God tells them: \u201cToday I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you.\u201d Every time they grumbled and complained, they resented leaving Egypt. Egypt symbolized strange gods, evil customs: in a word, sin. Through forty years of penance the Israelites reconciled themselves with God.<\/p>\n
The sacrament of Confession, the Catechism<\/em> tells us, \u201cis called the sacrament of Reconciliation, because it imparts to the sinner the love of God who reconciles: \u2018Be reconciled to God.\u2019 He who lives by God’s merciful love is ready to respond to the Lord’s call: \u2018Go; first be reconciled to your brother\u2019\u201d (CCC 1424).\u00a0Reconciliation with God and reconciliation with each other go hand in hand. At the start of each celebration of the Eucharist, we pray in the Penitential Rite confessing our sins to God and our brothers and sisters, and asking each other to pray to God that we might be forgiven for our sins.\u00a0We know that we have reconciled with God, and received his love again, when we are willing to reconcile with others. St. John in his first letter\u00a0says anything else is a lie: \u201cWe love, because he first loved us. If any one says, \u2018I love God,\u2019 and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen\u201d (1 John 4:19-20).<\/p>\n That brings us to the Prodigal Son and his brother. A moment to be reconciled is at hand for the whole family. We don\u2019t need to do much moral math to see that the Prodigal Son blew it and is sorry.\u00a0At first it seems he is just sorry that he doesn\u2019t have anything else to eat, due to using up all his father\u2019s money and then being in a famine, but when he comes back home, he has his lines all rehearsed: \u201cFather, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.\u201d\u2019\u00a0He barely says the words before his father gives him a big hug and calls for him to be dressed again as his son should be, and to throw a big feast. In an instant he goes from starving pig herder to a re-birthday party.<\/p>\n The tougher case that sometimes we overlook is the older brother; he couldn\u2019t believe what his little brother did, but he was even more confused over what his father did. In his words to his father we see there is some resentment, not only toward his younger brother, but toward his father. This bears the risk of leaving the older brother outside in the cold: he doesn’t want to reconcile with his father, nor with his brother.<\/p>\n The parable doesn’t say how the older brother reacted to his father’s words. If we feel like the older brother sometimes, this leaves the story open to a happy ending or sad one. Let’s spend the last few weeks of Lent reconciling with God and with others in order to have a truly happy ending to our story.<\/p>\n Readings:\u00a0Joshua 5:9a, 10\u201312;\u00a0Psalm 34:2\u20137;\u00a02 Corinthians 5:17\u201321;\u00a0Luke 15:1\u20133, 11\u201332.<\/em> See also\u00a031st Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a02nd Week of Lent, Saturday<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We are just past the half-way point in Lent.\u00a0Jesus is heading to Jerusalem for the last time, and Easter is a light on the horizon, because we live Lent with Easter in mind. The message for this Sunday is\u00a0on the lips of St. Paul in today\u2019s Second Reading: \u201cWe implore you on behalf of Christ, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[121,34,158,150,15],"class_list":["post-1143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cycle-c","tag-fourth-week","tag-laetare-sunday","tag-lent","tag-sunday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-ir","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1144,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions\/1144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}