27 March 2022 – 4th Sunday of Lent (Year C)

by Fr Francis Anthony

Dear friends,

We are halfway through Lenten Season and the text today, the readings, is not focusing on whether I have changed, whether I am on the route of conversion but it is making us to see the concern of God for all of us. And the high point is in the Second Reading where Saint Paul writing to the Corinthians saying ‘God has saved us through His son, Jesus Christ. The salvation has been given to us.‘

God has taken away our sin because of His love for us, not because of our acts of spirituality changed Him. God can never be changed. God is love. Out of love He created us. Out of love He has put His image in us. Out of love He has been following. If you follow the Bible, God has been helping the Jewish people.

So today, the First Reading from the book of Joshua, the context is they have crossed the desert, the wilderness, they have come into the Promised Land and today, they are celebrating. And today, God tells them ‘From now onwards, you will eat the fruit of this land. No more manna and quails for you as it was in the desert.‘ The plan of God. They disobeyed Him. They murmured but God still saved them and established them. That is the God that we have, wanting to link the bond of union between Him and us.

In the Gospel Text, we see a different version. I would not go to the role of the father and the prodigal son who came back. The so-called ‘good’ son who obeyed his father as he himself has said, never squandered the family property but he was just external.

The father went and told him ‘Come, we are celebrating. Your brother has come back.’ And what did he say? Oh, my brother has come back? No. He just told the father ‘Your son’. He did not want to even link with that brother of his. ‘Your son, when he comes back after squandering all the money, you make a feast for him.’

How he distanced himself away from the kindness that the father was doing.

When we speak of the prodigal son, we always emphasised on the change of heart, and how this boy came back. Yes.

In Saint Luke’s Gospel, right in the beginning, the Pharisees and the Scribes were always pointing fingers. The so-called ‘good’ leaders of the time. But they were like this elder son, ‘You are not able to link with us and be like us. You are with the sinners, the tax collectors.’

So, dear friends, we rejoice in today’s Mass that God is looking for our benefit and He is always helping us. Let us respond to Him and on be like this elder son, keep away and telling God ‘I want you to do what I want and how you have to have justice, to punish‘.

But here God’s justice is mingled with mercy.

Let us ask God to give us that merciful love like how He had for all of us.

Click below to listen to homily and watch video:-

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