In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Glory be to Jesus Christ.
Today's Sunday is, as we hear in the Gospel,
the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. And it is that
time when we are on our journey towards Lent,
which is our journey towards Pascha. The Prodigal
Son, of course, is an allegory. It represents
you and me, and I would say also it represents
collectively the Church of the New Testament
and even the Church of the Old Testament. But
before I get into that, which is our primary
focus, this is a good Sunday for us to recall
and to think about. the prodigal sons and the
prodigal daughters, the prodigal brothers, the
prodigal sisters, maybe even the prodigal parents
that we have in our life. And what do I mean
by that? Our children, our brothers and sisters,
say, who were raised in the faith, And then they
just drop out, stop going to church, and even
sometimes they announce, for whatever reason,
I don't believe in any of this anymore. How anguishing
that is for parents. It breaks their hearts.
It breaks our hearts if a beloved... brother
or sister stops attending church. Either maybe
they just reject it all or maybe because they're
just indifferent. Who knows the reason? But it
is necessary for us to pray for these prodigal
sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, whatever
it might be. The best example I have of that
is in one of my former parishes. There was a
woman who prayed earnestly before the icon of
the Theotokos. And after a while, we got into
a conversation about that. And she said, you
know, Father, I've been praying for my son who
stopped. going to church doesn't show any interest
in religion. And she prayed daily and then when
she goes to church prayed before the icon of
the Theotokos. And you know what happened? He
came back. The prodigal son returned. He started
coming to church and the joy that came into that
mother's heart replaced the anguish. that she
had before. So this story is an incentive for
us to pray for those individuals, those loved
ones in our family that, at least from our perspective,
should practice their faith a little bit more
fervently. But of course the main focus is that
the prodigal son is an allegory. It's a story
that represents something else. And of course,
you and I are the prodigal sons. But also in
an extended sense, the prodigal sons were the
Old Testamental Hebrew people, the Church of
the Old Testament, and even collectively us as
the Christian Church, the Church of the New Testament.
In Psalm 8, The psalmist meditates on the loftiness
of our status as human beings created by God.
He says, what is man that thou art mindful of
him, and the son of man that thou dost care for
him? By the way, that expression, son of man,
in Hebrew theology, evolves into a messianic
title, which is how it's used in the prophecy
of Daniel. And especially in St. Mark's Gospel,
this is preeminently a title for Jesus, Son of
Man. Son of God and Son of Man are used interchangeably
in the Gospels. But this term, at least in Psalm
8, refers to the dignity of us as human beings
created by God. What is man that thou art mindful
of him, and the son of man that thou dost care
for him? Yet thou hast made him a little less
than the angels, and dost crown him with glory
and honor. Thou hast given him dominion over
the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things
under his feet, all sheep and oxen, all... the
cattle of the fields, the birds of the air, and
the fish of the sea. Many of the fathers postulate
that this is what made the devil jealous because
God created these material beings and bestowed
upon them such dignity. A couple of the fathers
even say that's what also provoked the devil's
jealousy was that it was revealed to him that
the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity,
would become a human being, part of this created
nature which on a certain level is inferior to
the angelic nature. But of course, the other
side of that is, we sing in one of our church
hymns, the mystery which was hidden from everlasting
and was unknown even by the angels became known
through you, O Theotokos, referring to the incarnation
of the Son of God. Be that as it may, the devil
was jealous of us. This is why he tempted Adam
and Eve to revolt, to disobey, to turn away from
God. Adam and Eve to become the first prodigal
sons, to reject that glorious heritage and status
which God bestowed upon human beings at the time
of creation. The Jewish people in the course
of their history turned away from God as well.
The Hebrew people, once they were in the promised
land, began to adopt some of the practices and
even religious practices of their pagan neighbors.
And this provoked God's wrath and he permitted
the Assyrian Babylonians to come and take many
of the Jewish people into captivity. They were
deported to Babylon. And there in Babylon, the
Hebrew people lament their condition with very
good reason. The church at Matins last night
or this morning begins to sing Psalm 137, which
is the lamentation of the Hebrew people separated
from God, separated from their homeland, Zion
and Jerusalem, when they were deported to Babylon.
So Psalm 137 sings and laments. By the waters
of Babylon, There we sat down and wept when we
remembered Zion, Jerusalem, the promised land.
By the willows there we hung up our lyres. How
shall we sing the Lord a song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand
wither. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth. If I do not remember you, if I do not
set Jerusalem above my highest joy. This is the
anguish of the Hebrew people in exile. This is
the realization as well that in today's gospel
the prodigal son had. when he remembered what
he had and what he lost. This is what we, during
Lent, meditate on as well. And it becomes for
us individually and collectively, because the
whole Lenten period by the 4th century in the
liturgy of the Church evolves into Lent as we
have it now. It becomes a time when we as individuals
joined with the catechumens in preparation for
baptism. And it is an effort on the church's
part to make us regain that baptismal holiness
that we have lost through sin. So let us continue
on this journey to our true fatherland, our true
homeland. which is communion with God. It is
the father who looked so longingly from the rooftop
to see the return of his son. Not like the grumpy
son, the older son who was grumpy when the young
man returned. But the father looked out, waited
for his son. So our heavenly father looks out.
for us on our journey back to a deeper realization
of our status and our holiness as baptized Christians.
Amen.