A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son

“And he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country,and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.And he wished to fill his belly with thepods that the swine were eating,and no one gave him anything.” (Lk 15:15-16)

See to what the younger prodigal son, mentioned in the Gospel parable, came at last—the one who, from inexplicable willfulness, would not remain in his father’s house where, as he himself later acknowledged, even “the hired servants have food in abundance.” (Lk 15:17) Instead of genuine, truly friendly communion with his elder, wise, and well-behaved brother, he now attaches himself to one cruel inhabitant of that wretched region into which he had gone away from his father, and in which he had squandered his inheritance, living dissolutely. The cruel inhabitant sends him “into his fields to feed swine.” (Lk 15:15) Instead of complete contentment and abundance, which he had found before in his father’s house, he now suffers extreme and shameful poverty—the fruit of his dissolute life—so that he craves “to fill his belly with pods,” or acorns, “which the swine ate.” (Lk 15:16) Thus wretched was it, brethren, for the prodigal son to depart from his father’s house with his portion of the inheritance in a far and foreign land!

Need I say that the prodigal son spoken of in the holy Gospel represents us sinners? Indeed, our abilities—our mind, our will, our heart; our body with its health, its wonderfully wise and beautiful structure; our station to which each is called; our wealth; all our wellbeing; even the little plot of earth upon which we live—all this is our portion of the inheritance assigned to us by our Heavenly Father, who solely by His goodness, undeserved on our part, has apportioned to each of us a share of good things from His rich treasury and given us the freedom to go in all directions. Few of us remain with our inheritance under our father’s roof; many, taking their portion, as it were go away from our most-good Father to a distant land—into the sinful world—and there live dissolutely, captive to passions, until, finally, the cruelty and evident destructiveness of these passions convince them to return to their Father. Yes, our passions, our sins are absolute tyrants for us. Let us speak about this. Our Lord God is a most perfect being, so that our thought can never rise to a complete understanding of His perfections. Since He is all-perfect, He is therefore entirely self-sufficient and eternally blessed. The all-perfect and eternally blessed God created us not so that someone would torment and tyrannize us, but so that we would be eternally well, eternally blissful; but since only he who strives to be perfect and holy like God can be blessed, the Creator endowed us with free will and commanded us to be holy as He is holy. “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” (Lev 19:2; 1Pet 1:16) Strive to imitate Him in holiness with your mind, will, and feeling; know His perfections, love Him and in Him all people; do God’s works, and you will be holy, and you will be blessed. If you do not strive to know Him, to love Him, and to do what He has commanded, you will be a wretched sinner, an eternal prisoner and slave to passions. For blessedness is in God and from God; outside Him there can be no blessedness; there is only the tyrannical dominion of passions. What seems to be the burden of man to know and love God with all his soul and with all his heart? Let his soul be a creation foreign to him, but it is His creation, the breath of His mouth, His image. How could he not love his Creator, his Benefactor constant and eternal with all his being! Our body is a work of His wise mind and creating hands; our station, our wealth, all that we have except sin—it is His property; how could we not know and love with all our soul such a Benefactor, who gives us “life and breath and all things,” who “by Him we live and move and have our being” (Act 17:25,28)! How should we not, together with Him, love as brothers and sisters, as children of one and the same Father, our neighbors! It would seem, by justice, that we should wonder how we can know and love anything other than Him! How can we turn away from Him—the Source of life and blessedness? How can we rebel against His law and ordinances? How can we do anything displeasing to Him? Yet we do love much else besides Him; we do what He does not will and we turn away from Him. As a result, look at what happens to us; what we become like sometimes.

Here is a bold free-thinker who speaks not in his heart but proclaims aloud: “There is no God,” (Ps 13:1) or: there is no God-man Redeemer; there is no Church and no gifts of heaven bestowed in the mysteries for our spiritual life, perfection, and salvation! What then? Have you rejected everything spiritual, sacred, and heavenly? Then you are flesh, earth; there is no soul in you; you will not know heaven; hell is your eternal lot. Where is your soul, tell me? Every soul is from God and knows Him and yearns for Him; your soul knows no God; it is rather to say there is no soul in you than that there is no God, the Creator of all that exists. O, I see how pitiable is what you call your soul. In some unknown distance from the Father of spirits and of all flesh, it languishes, poor thing, in the realm of flesh, darkness, and destruction with an ineffable anguish for some loss, for something akin. What emptiness and darkness does it feel within itself! How comfortless does it find its condition! To be a spirit, to have spiritual needs and yearnings, and to find no satisfaction for them—what torment for the soul! To see how others flee to the temples of God with earnest prayers to God, how they receive gifts of heavenly grace there, and at the same time to feel within yourself the struggle of a proud reason that does not submit to holy truth with the natural yearnings of your own soul—how deadly this is for the soul! Turn back home, prodigal son; where have you gone? Why are you squandering your Heavenly Father’s inheritance far from Him, living dissolutely? Your mind is not your own: it is God’s gift. Why do you use it for evil? God gave it to you so that you would know Him and strive to become like Him; and yet you make it an instrument of destruction—to go farther from Him, to forget and not to know Him. Turn back to your Father, you wretched one; you have gone far; in that distance there is nothing but eternal death.

Here is an ambitious man for whom earthly honors are the goal of life. Instead of yearning for the eternal honor of your calling in Christ Jesus, he exhausts all his efforts to gain as much honor from men as he can. But on the way to his goal he meets many rivals who snatch away the dignities that, he thinks, belong to him! What frustration, how heavy is it not to receive what you so eagerly seek and what you sometimes think is already your own! How many nights does the ambitious man sometimes spend sleepless! And you, turn back; do you not see that you are going to a far land; farther and farther from your Heavenly Father? “Love of this world” love of its honors and distinctions, “is enmity toward God.” (Jac 4:4) Why do you wish to be above others? Do you not know that “the glory of man is like the flower of grass; the grass withered, and its flower faded away” (1Pet 1:24; Is 40:6-7) and that we are promised eternal glory in heaven with Christ? Your heart has been given a love of good repute—not so that you would eternally seek fleeting honors, but so that you would love spiritual ascent from glory to glory, turning away from sin as the greatest obstacle to your spiritual perfection. Return then to your Father’s house; abandon this petty ambition.

Here is a money-lover into whose hands has already passed many bright earthly sparkles whom he wishes to accumulate as much as he can. Silver and gold are his idol. And he has gone from God to a far land; the exhausting cares of acquiring and keeping his treasure pursue him day and night; he hears the word of God sometimes, but thoughts of wealth overwhelm it; about God, about his own soul, about its fate beyond the grave, he has no time to think: and he lives dissolutely. How many and what means does he sometimes not use to gather to himself so much of this beautiful, brilliant earth as his boundless desires can hold! Where is all this silver and gold for you? Why do you need so much? For a rainy day, to secure your family? But in the life of a true Christian there ought to be no rainy days—days of misfortune, according to worldly understanding—except those days when we greatly sin and anger our most-good Master of our lives. We live in the kingdom of a loving and care-taking Father, the eternal Advocate Son of God, and the Comforter Holy Spirit—our God, the Trinity of one essence. What dark days are there in such a kingdom? To secure your family? Very well. But for your family you need far less than what you have accumulated. And you want yourself alone to secure your family for the future! Why do you not entrust to God to arrange the future wellbeing of your children, entrusting them almost entirely to soulless metal? And if that shining metal falls into the hands of wasteful and dissolute children; if it corrupts them? Then you have a double misery: from gathering and not using your wealth as you should, and from ruining your children. Return also to your Father’s house. It seems to you that you are increasing your inheritance, the portion given to you by your Heavenly Father. No, you are squandering it, living dissolutely. To increase one’s inheritance means to multiply it through use according to God’s intention. How does one multiply through use? When you use something, you do not multiply but squander, you say. In this world that is indeed how it is; but not so with God. Yet you are not using it as you should, consequently you are squandering it, surely squandering it—whether willingly or unwillingly, sometimes invisibly to yourself. Return also to your Heavenly Father’s house; learn here that all earthly wealth is His possession, that we are stewards and distributors of this inheritance; be convinced that by distributing from your wealth to the poor as you are able, you do not squander it, but acquire it.

But here is a slave of indulgence and sensuality. What of him? Does he think to turn back to his Heavenly Father? Or have not yet the soul’s torments and bodily sufferings reached their final limit? But why wait for that time when already his soul has become completely weakened from shameful deeds, from sensuality, and his body is exhausted by constant, body-killing exertion? You have forgotten, dear brother, that your soul and body are not your own, but God’s, because they belong wholly to God as works of His hands, and moreover we are redeemed from sin by the price of the blood of God’s Son; you have forgotten that we must “glorify God in your bodies and in your souls, which are God’s.” (1Cor 6:20) You have gone far from God; you rarely enter the Church; you are ashamed to appear before the all-holy God with your uncleanness. Cleanse yourself and turn back to your Heavenly Father; it is ill for you on the distant shore under the cruel master of your shameful passion. Come to Me, your Heavenly Father and His beloved Son say to you: it is good for Me. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Mt 11:28,30) It is true that your passion gives you nothing to eat but “the pods that swine eat”; your pleasure is sickly, illusory; come to Me: I have everything in abundance; I have “the hired servants have food in abundance.” (Lk 15:17) And here is the pitiful victim of an insatiable belly—a man sick in soul and body from excessive love of intoxicating drinks and tasty foods consumed to excess. Go you as well. The Heavenly Father has long been seeking you. He does not want you to perish utterly, but to be saved, to come to your senses, and to become instead of a fleshly, God-opposing man, a spiritual, God-pleasing man. Hate the service to the belly, love golden temperance; be spiritual and do not squander your Heavenly Father’s inheritance, your soul’s and body’s powers, living dissolutely. Let His infinite goodness be for you an incentive to return to your Father’s embrace. Look at yourself: you do almost nothing but eat and drink; you are constantly immersed in sensual pleasures, while your Heavenly Father bears with you on His earth; all His sun shines upon you; He has not yet taken away your goods. Long ago you, like an unfruitful fig tree, should have been cut down and thrown into the fire; yet you still stand. Turn back; and the holy Church awaits you. You have long forgotten her, your mother. Yet she suffers for you as for her own child, laboring to save you, the disobedient one. The Lord calls all of us now with the voice of His holy Church into the embrace of His fatherly love, desires to save all of us. Soon the days of fasting and repentance will come; let us all hurry to cleanse ourselves from our sins and passions so that we may become new and spiritual people. Almost all of us live dissolutely—in a far land—on this sinful earth, forgetting altogether our desired and true homeland in heaven. O holy faith! Come to our aid, we who have gone astray; tell us that there is certainly another life for us beyond the grave, an infinite, blessed or tormented life—depending on how each person lives here: whether as a faithful son of the Heavenly Father—in constant communion with God, in purity, holiness, and love—or as a prodigal son far from God, in lusts and uncleanness? Tell us that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” (1Cor 15:50) “Brethren, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, whether of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Rom 6:11-14) “Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” (Rom 13:12-14) Amen.