Home sweet home

Two stories in today's readings - Israel's apostasy in Exodus and the wandering of the prodigal son in Luke - say much about our generation. They both, in some way or other, recount the stories of our running away from God, both on the personal level and on the collective level of society in general.

Christendom, that period of Western history during which the Church held sway as the moral and spiritual centrepiece of civilisation, has practically vanished. So we feel lost in a time and space which we took so much for granted and when, at this point in time, much of what we say as Christians needs to be justified.

It is like the feeling the prodigal son had when he felt homeless, away from his father's house. Earlier this year, on the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI made a very severe diagnosis, even coming to the point of stating that Europe is falling into a "remarkable form of apostasy".

Apostasy is turning away from God and falling into idolatry. In the first reading from Exodus today we meet the merciful God who, angry with his people, who so easily turn away from worshipping Him as the true God, eventually "relented and did not bring on His people the disaster He had threatened".

Then the Gospel proposes at one go the three parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, a trilogy unique to Luke. In the parable of the prodigal son, which forms part of this trilogy, God again is so quick to forget His son's sinful wandering at the joy of his return home. God's infinite love and mercy verge on the absurd, according to our logic and criteria. So the message in itself is puzzling.

The main character in the parable is the father, who experiences the loss and the restoration, extending compassion to both his sons. It is he who allows one son to withdraw physically with the risk of losing him forever, and the other son to stay but with bitterness, a loss of another sort.

It is the father whose mercy and openness to both children stands as the emblem of Jesus's work of restoration. So eager is God to receive back those who have wandered from covenant with Him, that the father in the story interrupts even the carefully rehearsed speech of repentance.

Giving a broader interpretation to this story, it tells even our collective story of being estranged from the father's house, and invites us to ponder deeply on where we actually belong. The father's house even today seems to be in ruins. There are those who have left. There are those who stay.

But whether we leave or stay, we are all and always in need of an authentic homecoming. In the story, one left and one stayed. But even the one who stayed has been alienated from his father. The return home of the one is in contrast with the other's refusal to enter the house.

What really blocks God's love in us is not, strictly speaking, the evil we do or our sinfulness or infidelity, but rather our presumption, the feeling of being sure of ourselves. That was the elder son's blockage. Joy and sadness are emotions we experience in the ups and downs of life.

But we rarely speak of the joy and sadness of God as the Scriptures do today. Sadness in God is triggered by idolatry. On the other hand, God rejoices at our return home. We continue to experience how certain courses of action and some choices we make will end in misery.

We need to listen more to the voice of our conscience to discover that, at the end of the day, our conscience is wiser than our culture.