We live in an unforgiving world. Miss a key field goal in a football game? Get booed in the stadium and have hate mail sent to you. Trip over a chair and fall into a fountain because you were looking at your cell phone? Live forever with the embarrassing internet memes that arise from it. Hit reply all instead of reply only to sender? Never live down that you ruined the birthday surprise party for your coworker.

We get criticized, immortalized, and cancelled for being in unfortunate circumstances; it can be much worse when it involves something of great importance, or a celebrity, or money.

Imagine today’s Gospel parable played out in today’s world. The younger son says to his father (who is still alive, clearly), Father give me the share of your estate that should come to me. First, that’s rude and demanding. “Dismissed!” Second, in asking his father to give him his share before the father passes away he is usurping Mosaic Law and his father’s authority. “Blocked!” Finally, in taking what he receives and spending it all on a life of dissipation is a rejection of his upbringing. Even more egregious is that he does it in a distant country, meaning he left his family to spend his fortune on himself only and not for the benefit of the family. “You’re dead to me!”

That’s not what happens, though, partly because this is perhaps the most benevolent father in Scripture, and partly because this parable is not just about our human failings, but God’s divine justice and mercy. Every day we do things that a great novelist would use to build our character arc and eventually deliver our comeuppance, but God our Father simply rejoices when we recognize the error of our ways and return to him.

Or maybe we’re the older brother, angry and grumbling about how selfish and thoughtless our [in our case, metaphorical] worthless younger brother has been to leave the way he did, squandering our good name along with our family fortune. We’re angry, too, at God, for not doing what wewant, and not meting out our standard of justice.

Can we just say a “thanks be to God” and an “amen” for that last sentence?Thank God he doesn’t do what we want according to our vision of justice and mercy. Thank God, that he imparts upon us not what we deserve but what he desires to give. Instead of erasing us, he restores us. This is good to know, because we will miss that field goal, we will get distracted and fall into the pool of trouble, and we will fail to communicate properly and carefully.

And should any of those happen because of sin, we can ask for the grace to come to our senses as the younger son did, and with contrition and repentance approach our Father with these words: I have sinned against heaven and against you. We are assured he will welcome us with joy and thanksgiving.

(Fr. Michał Pająk, OMI, March 30, 2025)