On this Laetare Sunday, in which the joy of Easter can already be glimpsed in the distance, the first reading takes us directly to the first celebration of this feast by Israel in the Promised Land. The journey through the desert was finally over, and the People of God ate for the first time of the fruits of the land that the Lord would place in their hands. It was also the last time they fed on manna, for that was the sustenance of a pilgrim people, and they had finally reached the goal. It must have been a day of great joy for all the children of Israel, to see that God always keeps his promises, that those who put their hope in the Lord are never disappointed.
We, however, are still advancing through the desert of Lent, and today the liturgy invites us to joy, contained but profound and beautiful joy, that is born of hope. Like Israel, we too will reach the end of our journey and rest in the Promised Land that is the risen Christ. We need only to follow the path that God himself has traced out for us and that today invites us to allow ourselves to be forgiven by God. St. Paul said, "We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." and this is what Jesus himself reminded us in the parable of the Prodigal Son.
This parable we have just heard is found exclusively in the Gospel of St. Luke, so we only hear it at Sunday Masses every three years. Nevertheless, it is one of the most beautiful and relevant pages of Sacred Scripture, because it offers us the most perfect portrait of the Heart of our heavenly Father, masterfully painted by the words of his Only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is the story of our life, and I confess that it never ceases to surprise me because in it I always find new riches that I had not considered before. It is a story as deep as the sea and with which we feel so deeply identified because we recognize ourselves in two of its main characters.
The first is the younger son. You are that son, and how many times have you turned away from God and made use of the gifts He gave you to wound His good Heart? Our Father never tires of waiting for us. It is the humility of God that made St. Francis exclaim: "Tu sei amore, carità. Tu sei sapienza. Tu sei umiltà. You are love. You are charity. You are wisdom. You are humility.” God is so humble that He accepts it when we treat Him as a second fiddle and abandon Him for other loves or when we make Him suffer when we do not respond to His Love. He always waits for us and persists in His love by accepting the humiliation to which we subject Him when we prefer other things or persons to Him, trusting that we will return to Him, attracted by His Love which is infinite! God's home in which we experience the warmth and joy of a love we do not deserve is His infinite Mercy. This Lent, let us return to Him to console Him and to let love have the last word in our lives.
We should also recognize ourselves in the elder son because how often we justify our lack of charity by saying that "we are right!" This is a point that my dear Father Valverde used to underline: the elder brother was right, but he did not have love. When he says to his father: "‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’” Deep down we must grant that he is right, that his Father seems to be very unfair because what the eldest son has said is totally true. It is true, but in that truth there is a lack of love. This son was not on the same wavelength as his father, because his Father does not reason according to the criteria of our human justice, which is always small and imperfect, but rather according to the bottomless depths of his love for us. How many arguments and how many problems in families would disappear if, instead of arguing and wanting to have the last word, we would learn to love more and not seek to always be right! Ah, but for that we must be humble like our Father, and we are very proud and always want to win over our brothers and sisters!
I’d like to end with this story. Last February I had to go to Los Angeles to arrange some paperwork at the Spanish Consulate. I finished shortly after eleven o'clock, and went to the Cathedral to try to go to confession there. I arrived before noon. A Mass was starting at 12:10, and I asked about the confession schedule. I was told that there were two hours of confession per week. You can't imagine how sad I was to hear that information, not so much for myself, but for the people of California. In the most important church of that diocese, which is in downtown Los Angeles, a place where people are continually passing through, where there are four priests assigned by the Archbishop to cover the pastoral needs of that community, there were only two hours of confessions.
Thanks to God and the generosity of Father Joal and Father Timothy, we have 25 hours of confessions every week here. During Holy Week, we will offer 60 hours of confessions. The words of the Lord in the Gospel come to mind: "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more." (Lk 12:48)
Dear brothers and sisters, "we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God". As St. Bernard says: "God, when he loves us, desires only to be loved." Well then, may we all feel this Lent the joy of our Father's embrace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, may we no longer distance ourselves from true love and may our joy be to live close to the One who loves us without measure.
