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Reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Lent |
By Jean Stokan and Scott Wright
Joshua 5:9a, 10-12 ~ Psalm 34 ~ 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 ~ Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
FOR HE WAS DEAD AND COME BACK TO LIFE, WAS LOST AND HAS BEEN FOUND
Henri Nouwen’s book The Return of the Prodigal Son invites the reader to meditate on the parable to glimpse the feelings of compassion and unconditional love. The book is also a meditation on the painting of Rembrandt about the same parable. Of the painter, Nouwen writes: “For hours I looked at the splendid drawings and paintings created in the midst of all his setbacks, disillusionments, and grief, and I came to understand how from his brush there emerged the figure of a nearly blind man holding his son in a gesture of all-forgiving compassion. One must have died many deaths and cried many tears to have painted a portrait of God in such humility.”
This is the vision that today’s Gospel invites us to share, a vision of unconditional love and compassion, of living as resurrected beings in the midst of life’s crosses or, as Paul says: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
We are truly on a Lenten journey, and this year’s journey will no doubt be different from last year’s and next year’s. The Gospel is just that, a “great adventure.” Some of us may identify more with the prodigal son or daughter, others of us with the elder brother or sister, still others with the compassionate father or mother. Truly, we are all of these.
Or, as Nouwen writes: “I never dreamt that becoming the son was only a step on the way to becoming the welcoming father . . . and trusting that real joy and real fulfillment can only come from welcoming home those who have been hurt and wounded on their life’s journey, and loving them with a love that neither asks nor expects anything in return.”
In a very real sense, this is the kind of love that Archbishop Romero demonstrated week after week during a bloody conflict in El Salvador. In his Sunday homilies, he read aloud the letters of grieving mothers and denounced the torture, disappearances, and deaths that took the lives of people who were poor. He said:
"Nothing is so important to the church as human life, as the human person, above all, the person of the poor and the oppressed, who, besides being human beings, are also divine beings, since Jesus said that whatever is done to them he takes as done to him. That bloodshed, those deaths, are beyond all politics. They touch the very heart of God." – Archbishop Oscar Romero
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