GOD KNOWS

VIVID DREAM

1. The subject of today's meditation is "God Knows". Some say that every character in a dream actually represents a particular aspect or manifestation of the person dreaming. From time to time we recall a dream experience vividly confirming this. The next time you wake up, think about one of the persons in your dream.

2. Say to yourself, This character in my dream stands for some aspect of my life, my own personhood. What does this dream person represent? What does this infer about me, about who I am and what I’m dealing with?

AS A KEY

3. Dreams are often rich and extravagant, and sometimes they are very informative. It is this rather dreamlike quality that helps make Luke's story of the "Prodigal Son" the most beloved parable of all.

4. We love this parable because it functions as a key, a key which unlocks the mystery of our humanity and our relationship with God. The parable offers many insights and many lessons—chief among them being the rich and extravagant reality of God’s mercy.

MANY POSSIBILITIES

5. Clearly, we see something of ourselves in each of the three characters of the parable. The father, the older son, and the younger son, each represent the best and the worst in us, the royal road of pleasure and the way of sorrows, rejection and acceptance, folly and wisdom, betrayal and mercy, mourning and celebration. And perhaps about being a more humane human being.

6. We could not begin to exhaust the possibilities of meaning in this story. Jesus’ parable is amazingly effective at uniting his mission as story-teller with the experiences of his listeners. Each brings a multiplicity of nuances, variations, and subtlties to the text.

CHARACTERS

7. Parables are meant to be heard rather than read. But readers everywhere—Christian and non-Christian alike—are not left out. Anyone who reads this story seriously may say at the end, I understand.

8. Let’s take a moment to read this wonderful story, to enjoy again its profound lessons of love and mercy. Before I begin, I ask you to be attentive to the characters of the father, the older and younger sons, and how each has something to say about you, who you are, and who God wants you to be.

"BEST ROBE"

9. Our Lord’s parable of the prodigal son is found in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 15, starting with verse 11:

AND JESUS said, "There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that falls to me.' And he divided his living between them.

“NOT MANY days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want.

“SO HE went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have fed on the pods that the swine ate; and no one gave him anything.

“BUT WHEN he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants."'

“AND HE arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'

“BUT THE father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to make merry.

“NOW HIS elder son was in the field; and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what this meant. And he said to him, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe and sound.'

“BUT HE was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, 'Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends.

“BUT WHEN this son of yours came, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf!' And he said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’” [Lk 15:11-32]

YOUR HUMANITY

10. I invite you to consider that, within your own humanity, exists both brothers of the parable and their father. By coming to terms with these persons and what they represent, you may be able to come to terms with yourself. Consider as well, that your true home is the Church, and it’s in the Church where you celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

11. You and I are well-represented by the younger brother. We are sinners, and on occasion, our sin is shocking. Our sin is known. It’s there for all to see. Its beyond our control. We scarcely can hide it.

HEARTS POUND

12. We have wandered far away from the Father's House, squandering the valuable gifts and blessings we have received from God. We live disordered lives. Our hearts pound with impoverishment, distress, and dread of the future. On a day of sunshine, our soul cannot throw off the shroud of sorrow.

13. You and I are also like the older brother. We keep a lid over our sins. We keep them hidden, behind doors, under cover, and under our control or power. We try to cover-over or erase our sins by the good things we do.

SAFE HARBOR

14. We think doing our duty is a safe harbor, that is to say, we can suppress everything in the name of work. As long as we work, we don’t have to face ourselves. We imagine that duty cancels out our sin, that we can break even with God.

15. We carefully cultivate propriety and correctness. Like a bank teller, we sit in our little cage totting up things. While we work, we tally up everybody else’s sins.

ABIDING ANGER

16. We rehearse what we’re going to say to people we don’t like, how we’re going to get even with them. We snarl and hiss with indignation. We grow rigid, aloof, and isolated in our self-determined respectability.

17. We think we control the world, or our little corner of it, because our hands have engaged in its commerce. We break the rules we mercilessly impose on others. Sadly, however, our abiding anger reminds us that we are really not in control, that we are not masters of our realm. We are anxious and insecure.

OUTSIDE THE HOUSE

18. It’s a mystery, surely, that you and I who are different persons, can see ourselves in these two conflicted brothers. We need to come to our senses. Did you notice, in the reading of the parable, that both brothers are outside the father’s house? But for different reasons.

19. Being “outside the house” is not merely an accident of the story. “Outside the house” refers to nothing less than estrangement, isolation, aloneness, disaffection. To be a human being in the full sense of the term is to be inside the house.

GROWING APART

20. Human beings are meant to belong to a circle of dear friends, to be an intimate member of a family, to be a cherished neighbor in a community, and a beloved disciple of Christ’s Church.

21. Both brothers are outside the father’s house. Somewhere along the line, each has grown apart from the other and his father. Each has become cold and indifferent to the other. The younger son runs away from responsibility. He doesn’t want to grow up. He’s a child in a grown-up body.

ALL OUTCASTS

22. The older brother is a hard worker. When it comes to labor, crops, engineering, machinery, raw materials, and finished product, he’ll make a great effort. But he doesn’t want to face the work of human relationships. He says to himself, Good riddance. With his younger brother out of the way, he can take center stage and be a one-man show.

23. Both brothers are outside of the house, that is, the Kingdom of God and the celebration of mercy within it. Before God's infinite holiness, we are all outcasts. Now can you see something of yourself in these two brothers?

PRAYER MOMENT

24. The late Dom Helder Pessoa Camera, Archbishop of Recife and Olinda in northeast Brazil, addressed the question, Which one of the brothers is closer to salvation? Conversely, Which soul of the two is in greater peril?

I PRAY incessantly for the conversion of the prodigal son's brother. Ever in my ear rings the dread warning. The one has awoken from his life of sin. When will the other awaken from his virtue? (August 29th, 1962)

25. Sacred Scripture says that the young man, alone and miserable in a foreign country, “came to himself”. [Lk 15:17] Have you taken a moment in prayer to ask God what this means? He “came to himself”. Where had the young man been? The young man had been in turmoil.

WORST ENEMY

26. Just as he had walked away from his father, the younger son had abandoned his true self. He was at war with himself. He took himself hostage to a far country. Every day he tried to re-create himself, to bind himself to a new idea, a new so-called truth, a new form of self-expression.

27. He was his own worst enemy. Yet, there was hope. The young man found hope in humility. At the moment of his conversion, he let go of his tyrannical self. He let go of all the fantastic experimentations and innovations that threatened his life.

FUNDAMENTAL MEMORY

28. Desperately and heroically, he cast aside his false self with its masks and disguises. He returned to a fundamental memory—the fountain we may say—of his true self. This memory, which philosophers know as “true-to-being”, brought the boy back to his senses.

29. He “remembered” what it meant to be a human being. He returned to the primordial memory shared by all human beings: the image and likeness of God! Reconciling with his authentic self, the young man came to a startling realization. Sins on earth are simultaneously sins against heaven.

NOT LEAST THING

30. Our sins are many, and very obvious to God. We may rationalize them or dismiss them in some abstract way. We may laugh about them and think they’re nothing. But God knows. God knows!

31. Nothing is hidden from him, not the least thing. He knows our games, our self-deceptions, our schemes and strategies. He sees our tortured hearts, our lawlessness, the dark corners and hidden secrets.

WORLD'S POVERTY

32. Obsession with worldly rank, privilege, pleasure and material things reveals a profound poverty of spirit. None of us, not even presidents and prime ministers, can repay God for his merciful love. The famine in the parable is a lesson to us that we cannot count on the world or its leaders to care for us and feed our true hunger.

33. Our own irresponsibility and anger contributes to the world's poverty of spirit. When all is said and done, the history of man’s inhumanity to man is the sum of broken hearts and wrecked relationships.

FIRST CONVERSATION

34. St. Therese of Lisieux wrote that, in the twilight of this life, we will stand before God with empty hands. Not even the good works of saints possess merit on their own apart from God. All of us, saint and sinner alike, must be judged according to the merits of God's own works in us.

35. Meeting God in judgment will be your first face-to-face conversation with God. This being true, wouldn’t it be most dreadful to stand before God and hear—what?—nothing! Only a terrifying silence. If the “merits of God’s own works” are not to be found in your life, what could you expect? Would you be ready to hear the words, I don’t know you?

"MEMORY IS BITTER"

36. The writer and journalist Stephen Crane is famous for his Civil War novel THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, published in 1895. Did you know that he was also a poet? One of his poems addresses the reality of human frailty and over-confidence. In this poem, human souls are littles blades of grass. They are standing before God in judgment. One little blade is different than all the rest. I share with you his poem:

XVIII
In heaven,
Some little blades of grass
Stood before God.
"What did you do?"
Then all save one of the little blades
Began eagerly to relate
The merits of their lives.
This one stayed a small way behind,
Ashamed.
Presently, God said,
"And what did you do?"
The little blade answered, "O my lord,
Memory is bitter to me,
For, if I did good deeds,
I know not of them."
Then God, in all His splendour,
Arose from His Throne.
"O best little blade of grass!" He said.
     [COLLECTED POEMS Knopf 1941 p. 20]

CONFESSION

37. When did you last humble yourself before God in the Sacrament of Confession? When are you going to make it a habit in your life? Are you God’s faithless son? His faithless daughter? God the Father goes out to meet you, his prideful, disobedient child, on the road.

38. God approaches you in the midst of your anxious activities. His arms are open to embrace you. Will you reach out to him? He speaks to you in the depth of your conscience. Are you listening? He has prepared the medicine of truth and forgiveness. Will you take it?

PRODIGAL HEART

39. Our heavenly Father wills for you to be true to being. Will you be true to his image and likeness? Will you be true to the “mind of Christ”? [cf. 1Cor 2:16] Is the sacrifice of Christ on the cross the very center of your memory and your human identity?

40. It is just possible that you do understand? That you realize the father and his younger son in the parable both have prodigal hearts? It’s ironic, isn’t it? The father’s mercy is as prodigal as the younger son’s irresponsible conduct!

THIS STRANGER

41. He sees someone in the distance, staggering on the road, bowed and broken. Who is it? This stranger in the road? Is it? No, it can’t be. I lost him so long ago. O Lord, it’s my boy!

42. His heart pounding, the father takes one step and then another. And he runs. The young boy looks up. He sees his father running to him. He cries, Don’t run, father. Don’t run. I don’t deserve it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for how I’ve hurt you.

FATHER'S LOVE

43. The Mass of Reconciliation expresses a father’s love most beautifully. In the Mass, the Church prays to the Father in heaven: “When we were lost and could not find the way to you, you loved us more than ever…” [SACRAMENTARY Reconciliation I, Appendix VI p. 1124]

44. And so this faithful father and tormented boy meet on the road leading to their home. How long they embrace, we do not know. But we do know that the father thought it “fitting to make merry and be glad, for (his son) was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found”. [Lk 15:32]

HOPE'S PLEDGE

45. Our Lord Jesus Christ understood. He understood why mercy is deserving of a banquet: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” [Lk 15:7]

46. If we are to honor that which is supremely noble in human beings, let us remember to honor mercy. It is for this heroic virtue that compassion intercedes before the demands of justice. Mercy is hope’s pledge and the guarantor of man’s humanity. By mercy alone can one summon the courage to lay down his most formidable weapon, anger.

VERY POTENT

47. Our heavenly Father joyfully invites you into his sacred household, for he has prepared for you a lavish banquet of acceptance, forgiveness and love. He desires to clothe you once more in the finest robe, the garment of sinlessness. For your ring, he wants you to possess the seal of confession, and for your footwear, audacious confidence.

48. Our heavenly Father's mercy is not a sign of weakness. Quite the contrary, Our Father's merciful love is very potent. Powerful and regenerative, God's mercy goes before us to lift up the valleys, to level the mountains and hills. [cf. Isa 40:4]

NO SUBSTITUTE

49. Mercy is the “Holy Way” [Isa 35:8] prophesied by Isaiah, the open river on the bare height, the fountain in the valley, the pool of water in the wilderness, and the spring of water in dry land. [cf. Isa 41:18] Our Lord declares:

WHOEVER DRINKS of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. [Jn 4:14]

50. Time and distance and forgetfulness—these things are like water in a stream. They are given to man to ease his journey from birth to death and to soften the heartaches that lie between. But they are no substitute for mercy, forgiveness, and the hard work of reconciliation.

FORGOTTEN TERRARIUM

51. If forgetfulness and time and distance were the true remedy, God would go very far away from us indeed. There would be no love, no cross, no redemption. Mankind would suffer a long, slow and lonely death in a forgotten terrarium.

52. If one burns with enduring anger like the older son, the memory of mercy that makes one true to being is consumed as well. Likewise, time, distance and forgetfulness are devoured by the fire of anger, leaving the embittered heart in a howling wasteland.

FOR SANCTIFYING

53. For man is a spiritual creature, possessing language and reason, self-reflection and the capacity to create. And mercy is all these things with a view to God’s goodness. God is the Supreme Good before whom we must render an accounting. “For I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.” [Lev 11:44]

54. If these things—language, reason, self-reflection and creativeness—are necessary for the formation of good and satisfying human relationships, then they are indispensable as well for sanctifying human beings and healing relationships.

LEAST PLACE

55. We advance far in spiritual life when we realize that the least place in the Kingdom of God is better than the royal bed of selfishness we’ve prepared for own comfort. The least place in God's kingdom is the kneeler in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The kneeler is the Mercy Seat of God.

56. The mercy seat [cf. Ex 25:17-22] of the Sacrament of Confession is where we belong. There we will find our enduring happiness:

FOR A day in (God's) courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. [Psa 84:10]

GOD'S SIGHT

57. As spiritual creatures made in the image and likeness of God [cf. Gen 1:26], we experience the profound desire to know him with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. As fallen creatures, however, we had no hope of fulfillling our desire to know God and please him:

FOR WE ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by men and hating one another; 4.

BUT WHEN the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5. he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, 6.

…WHICH HE poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7. so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life. [Tit 3:3-7]

58. Do you realize, do you truly realize that your humanity is considered holy in God’s sight? Yes, you may not act holy. You rarely may possess holy thoughts. You may be abusing your body and the core relationships of your life. You may be as far away from God as a person can get.

"CHRIST IS EVERYTHING"

59. Against all this, is one reality: God nevertheless considers your human personhood to be a holy sign of his own sacred godhead. After all, in whose image and likeness are you made? Your own? By no means! God made you in his image and likeness. [cf. Gen 1:26] And seeing his own likeness in you, our dear Lord Jesus Christ provides for you as his very own:

CHRIST IS everything for us (wrote St. Ambrose of Milan). If you wish to cure a wound, he is doctor; if you burn with fever, he is fountain; if you are oppressed by iniquity, he is justice; if you are in need of help, he is strength; if you fear death, he is life; if you desire heaven, he is the way; if you flee from darkness, he is light; if you seek food, he is nourishment. [La Verginità (Virginity), 99: SAEMO, XIV/2, Milan-Rome, 1989, p. 81]

60. God’s love is granted freely, but his trust must be earned—even continually proven. Who can quarrel with this? Who would not want to prove himself before Christ in small and humble ways in the hope that the Son of God, taking pleasure in our little efforts, would lavish upon us the wealth of his Father's house?

WHERE ARE YOU?

61. For our part, what remains crucial, however, is whether we are true to our humanity, our very human being, and true to the living memory of God infused in our souls and revealed to us by his Spirit: "And let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap (a harvest), if we do not lose heart." [Gal 6:9] We love in order to learn love. We trust in order to learn trust. We forgive others, that we in turn may be forgiven.

62. Certainly once, but perhaps many times, God sets out to meet us. An old saying expresses well the reality of God’s merciful love: “God meets us precisely on the road we take to avoid him”. The Father sees you while you are yet at a distance. Deeply moved, he is on the road now. Where are you?

 

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