Lord, Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession by Scott Hahn

Author:Scott Hahn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Religion, Catholicism, Christianity
ISBN: 9780385508773
Publisher: Image
Published: 2003-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

Homeward Bound

Previously, I said that the young man’s moral and financial ruin “coincided” with the natural disaster of a famine. I do not mean, however, that this was a chance occurrence. It was coincident, simultaneous, but it was no accident. Indeed, I’d say it was provident. For only such a catastrophe could have brought about the prodigal son’s conversion. It wasn’t a warm wave of nostalgia that set him on the road to his father’s house. It was hunger, shame, and the fear of death. As he came to his senses, he realized that it would be better to live as a slave to his father than to die, in a foreign land, as a slave to his sensuality. While he ached for a taste of pig fodder, the lowliest servants back home had “bread enough and to spare” (Lk 15:17).

So he began his return, and surely the long journey seemed longer still on an empty stomach. By the time he stood in sight of his father’s lands, his hunger and shame must have been as overpowering as his odor.

His father sighted him from afar. How could that be so if he had not been always on the lookout for his lost son?

The old man then does something remarkable. He runs down the road to greet his boy. This was just short of a cultural taboo. It was considered unseemly for a nobleman to run. But this patriarch put aside his greatness and dignity to greet his son and lavish his love upon him. He embraces his son—the Greek phrase is more evocative: he “fell upon his neck” (Lk 15:20).

The son began to give voice to his prepared speech, but after a few words the father had heard enough. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.” The son’s contrition was imperfect, just a little more than a hankering after a full belly and a warm bed, but it was enough. For he had come to his home and he had acknowledged his sin.

The third-century commentator Origen notes that it was only after the son had shown some small contrition—only after he had made his confession—that the father brought him home. “He would not add the sin ‘against heaven’ if he did not believe that heaven is his fatherland, and that he did wrong when he left it. So, such a confession makes his father well disposed to him.”

Then, quite suddenly, a sin that had been mortal—a sin that had killed off the boy’s sonship, his inheritance, and his family life—was instantly forgiven, absolved, taken away: “for this my son was dead, and is alive again” (Lk 15:24).

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