Year C
Twenty-fourth
Sunday in Ordinary Time
Images
Reconciliation
Points
to note
This is actually a very
long reading and there are actually three parables in this reading. I have, however, cut it down to the one we
all know best and love. I have also left
out the second part of the parable: the
part about reconciliation with the elder brother. You could include it in as well if there is
something to share on it. The truth is
that this parable is one of the richest in the Bible and that is no
cliché. In this leaflet, we can only
provide a glimpse of what we could share.
The idea of reconciliation
is sometimes seen as a difficult concept to get across. Sometimes, we think of the sacrament and all
the fear we associated with it when we were young. Often, it is because we, as adults, find it
harder to reconcile with one another and we project on the children our own
anxieties about how our egos get bruised and how we will be received when we
seek reconciliation.
Children, on the whole,
reconcile much more easily than adults and reconciliation is frequent and,
often, part of daily lives, even if unknowingly. Again as always, the trick here is to bring
ourselves into the children’s daily lives and draw examples from there.
Liturgy
Acclamation before the
Gospel
Alleluia! Alleluia!
God in Christ was
reconciling the world to himself,
And he entrusted to us the
news that they are reconciled.
Alleluia!
Gospel
Explain what a Pharisee is. They
are members of a sect within Judaism who believe that salvation lies in being
faithful to God and by scrupulously following the Law to the letter and that
anyone who does not follow the exact wording of the law is condemned. A tax collector, on the other hand, is
treated as an outcast of society because they work for the Romans, who are
foreigners and because they tend to collect more than their due.
The Lord be with you.
All: And with your spirit.
A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St
Luke
All: Glory to you O Lord
(Lk 15:1-32)
The tax collectors and
sinners were all seeking the company of Jesus to hear what he had to say, and
the Pharisees and the scribes complained.
“This man,“ they said, “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he spoke this parable to them:
“A man had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, let
me have the share of the estate that would come to me.’ So the father divided the property between
them. A few days later, the younger son
got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he wasted
his money on a life of fun and sin.
“When he had spent it all,
that country had a severe famine, and now he felt some hardship over being
poor, he hired himself out the one of the local farmers who put him on his farm
to feed the pigs. And he would willingly
have filled his belly with the husks the pigs were eating, but no one offered
him anything. Then he came to his senses
and said, ‘How many of my father’s paid servants have more food than they want,
and here I am dying of hunger! I will
leave this place and go to my father and say:
Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer
deserves to be called your son; treat me as one of your paid servants.’ So he left the place and went back to his
father.
“While he was still a long
way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms
and kissed him tenderly. Then his son
said, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your
son.’ But the father said to his
servants, ‘Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his
finger and sandals on his feet. Bring
the fattened calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we are going to have a
feast, a celebration, because this son of mine was dead and has come back to
life; he was lost and is found.’ And
they began to celebrate.”
This is the Gospel of the
Lord
Dialogue
Anyone been in a fight at
home before? With whom? Be ready for a long list of grievances
against siblings and about why they fought!!
Just cut it short. Who gets
upset? The person we fought with. Do you stay angry forever? No, eventually
we make up. Explain that the word reconciliation
means to bring two persons or two things together. So, when our adversary and we are brought
together to make up after a fight, we are said to have been reconciled. How do we make up after such a fight?
When we fight at home, is
it only our brother and sister who got upset?
Who else? Our parents. How
do we make up with our parents after such a fight? How do we reconcile with our parents?
Explain that so it is with God. When we fight among ourselves and when we get
upset with one another, we also make God unhappy. That is why the son in the story wanted to
say, I have sinned against my father and against God.
That is why we need to reconcile with
God. We need to be brought together with
God. Because before we were reconciled
with God, we are far away from him.
Notice how miserable the son was before he returned to the father. We will be similarly miserable before we
reconcile ourselves with God.
Take care that the children do not get the
idea that God gets angry with us and keep us far away from him. The son in the story was kept far away from
his father, not because his father threw him out but by his own actions.
Coming back to our parents, when they get angry with
us, do they stay angry with us forever?
Is there any way we can help our parents get over their anger?
Likewise with God, He does not stay angry with us for long. I doubt if there is a time when he is angry
with us. The most touching part of the
story for me was when the father asked his servant to get the fattened
calf. I used to wonder much about that
line. I have realised why: the father has been getting a fattened calf
ready for quite some time. He did not
forgive the son when the son came back.
He forgave the son before the son came back. He must have forgiven the son before the son
showed any remorse. He must have forgiven
the son even before ……
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