Today’s readings: Exodus 32, 7-11.13-14; 1 Timothy 1, 12-17; Luke 15, 1-32.

Much of what is written in the gospels sounds very familiar to us, particularly the parables and narratives with which since childhood we have been domesticated. Yet, being God’s inspired Word, the gospels lend themselves to a deepening in understanding that goes beyond our imagination. There are always hidden messages to be uncovered, truths to be recovered and ideas that verge on the ambiguous.

All this because God’s love and mercy, the focal points of the entire written word, are scandalous. Scandalous means ‘shocking’ and ‘upsetting’. The gospels may shock us with Jesus’ outbursts of anger or with his constantly harsh judgments and mean adjectives hurled at the Pharisees and the religious authorities of his time. But what is really shocking in Jesus, from the start to the end of his journey, is his mercy interpreted all along in a way very opposite to the way of thinking of religious people, us included.

This has always been scandalous throughout the entire history of Christianity. Most probably, that explains why it has been practiced very little in the Church and by the Church. We always opted to comfortably follow what Pope Francis calls a “cold bureaucratic morality” rather than to advocate God’s way of doing and willing things.

Today’s gospel parable, music to the ears of so many of us, calls for a radical shift in our way of perceiving God and judging others. Embracing God’s grace at work in the lives of people, particularly in those in whom we least expect to discern God’s footprints, can make our life as believers complicated and the Church’s mindset confused.

The parable is in a sense the trademark of Luke’s gospel; it is found only there, and even for us today it marks a radical departure from normal pastoral practice. Looking back, we have on various counts departed from the ways of Jesus and succumbed to ways of thinking and seeing things very distant from the gospel outlook.

Up to relatively recently we upheld capital punishment, we denied God’s reconciliation in cases we considered off limits, we arrogated for ourselves the right to decide who deserves and who does not deserve God’s salvation. The list is endless. And we perpetuated all this while at the same time we read out to our congregations and in our churches such readings as we have today on this Sunday.

Now we are called to a conversion of mentality. As Pope Francis writes in his recent Amoris laetitia (The Joy of Love), “by thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths of sanctification which give glory to God”.

This is the attitude personified in the elder son of the parable in today’s gospel, angry towards his brother and his father, unable to acknowledge his father’s gratuitousness and closing himself off from the source that could have given him life. The parable is not about people who wander off from the Church or whose behaviour and choices cut them off from God’s grace.

The parable is about attitudes that build our personalities and shape our characters. It is about the anger and envy that blind us to other people’s sufferings and achievements. It is about the humility to confess one’s guilt or blame, and the determination to change course in life when one’s fault is acknowledged. It is about the endurance of love that kept the father waiting patiently and firmly believing in his son’s potential to change course.

The narrative is not about a father and two sons, but about different phases we go through in life and the impending danger to get stuck in the past without the will to move on. We all need to aspire to be to all those around us what the father in the parable was for both of his sons.