This is a parable in which Jesus has best revealed to us both the mystery of God and the mystery of the human condition. No other parable could describe better to us the nature of a good parent.
The younger son tells his father: “Father, let me have the share of the estate that would come to me.” Asking for such a thing, in a way, implied
the father’s death. He wants to be free and sever all connections. He will not be happy until he is away from his father. The father agrees to it without discussion: the son has freely chosen his way.
Doesn’t this sound like our modern condition? There are so many today who want to be free from God, to attain happiness without their dependence on one almighty God in the horizon. God has disappeared from our society and our consciences. And, as in the parable, the Father does not complain, God does not respond to anyone.
The son goes away to a distant country. He wants to live in another place, away from his parents and family. The father watches him go, but he will not forget him; his fatherly heart goes along with him; every morning, he will be waiting for him. Modern society is getting away from God, from his authority and from his memory… But God is still waiting for us, even as we keep losing sight of Him.
The son will soon settle down in a life of debauchery. This word actually means that he led not only a morally disordered life, but also loose and chaotic. In a short time, his adventure turned into a drama. The country where he was experienced a severe famine, and he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on his farm to feed the pigs. His own words reveal his tragic condition: “Here I am dying of hunger.”
An inner emptiness and a hunger for love are often the first signs of our getting away from God. The long road to freedom is never an easy one.
What is it that we find lacking? What do we need to fill our hearts? We have everything else, so why are we still hungry?
The young man came to his senses, and searching within his own emptiness, he remembered his father and the abundance in his father’s home, where “some of his father’s servants had more food than they want, and here I am dying of hunger.” Somewhere within himself, he began to feel the need for another kind of freedom in his father’s home. He realized his mistake and made a decision: “I will leave this place and go to my father.”
Can we, too, begin our way back to our Father’s place? There are so many who would actually do that if they knew God who, as we read in the parable, “he ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly.”
Those embraces and kisses speak of a love that reveals much more than what is described in all the books of theology. Next to this Father, we shall experience a freedom that is much more fulfilling and complete.