Lost sheep and lost coin (Luke 15:1-10)
1 The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to him,
2 but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
3 So to them he addressed this parable.
4 "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?
5 And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy
6 and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.'
7 I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.
8 "Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it?
9 And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.'
10 In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
comments by Association of Catholic Priests https://www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie:
In Luke’s account, Jesus never misses an opportunity to join in a dinner-party. Many of the great discourses in this gospel were delivered at the dining table of his wealthy hosts. Both parables conclude with a happy retriever of lost goods [a lost sheep or lost silver pieces] inviting friends and neighbours in and bidding them, ‘Rejoice with me!’ and such happy occasion are compared with God’s own joy in heaven over one repentant sinner, which is greater than over the ninety-nine righteous who have no need to repent. Each of us is reflected both in the ninety-nine sheep that are always accountable, and in the one lost sheep that wanders off and is reluctant to live under control. We have ideas and talents that we understand and try to carefully direct. They are always with us and we are quietly proud of them. These constitute the 99% righteous part of ourselves that has “no need to repent.” But perhaps God has also poured an unruly talent or quality into us. Stretching the parable a bit, we might say that this easily lost part of ourselves can be a unique opportunity crossing our path.
The parable assures us that the lost sheep and lost coin
in each of us can be found. We must leave aside the ninety-nine other
aspects of ourselves and seek this one, fleeting aspect. But are we
ready and willing to light a lamp and sweep the house of our existence
diligently, till we discover the lost coin?
In this light we can understand Paul’s words about
harshly judging our neighbour. What value may be just the ninety-nine
safe sheep, the other being lost to view. Our bourgeois
judgment seldom considers the value of the lost sheep or coin, which
cannot easily be seen. But when the lost one is found, the flock of a
hundred is complete, for Jesus wants all of his people to share in his
life.
comments by Irish Dominicans:
In Luke, chapter 15 we read about the lady who has ten coins, and loses one. She lights a lamp and sweeps the floor until she finds it. As in the other stories she, too, calls in her friends and neighbours to rejoice with her because she has found it. And each time Jesus’ message is, ‘Just so, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine good people who don’t need to repent.
The man searching for the lost sheep is Jesus, the good shepherd who will give his life for his sheep.
The lady who lost the coin – who is she an image of? She too, of course, is an image of God, of the mother-love of God. Jesus is leading us to see that in God, every good and wonderful kind of love is multiplied infinitely: father-love, mother-love, the love of spouses and friends. We need to accept all those kinds of love from God. Men, women and children need to experience the mother-love of God.
After the Christmas events, St. Luke tells us that ‘Mary treasured all these things in her heart’ (2:19). We need to do the same. In time, we will become more like her in our ability to mirror God’s mother-love to others.
Be the coin
You are lying there in the in the dust of an earthen floor. The house is dark. The floor is cluttered and uneven. Like every other coin, you were made to shine. Why then are you here, covered with dust? What is this dust that clouds your image? Is it sadness, worry, anger, guilt, pain, loneliness, even despair? Or is it just a little coating of dust, suggesting that you haven’t had much time to enjoy God’s love and closeness during the past days or months or years? Or is it that you feel God is hiding from you?
You need to spend time every day, even in the darkness, waiting, hoping, trusting. The mother-love of God will break through to you. ‘Can a mother forget her baby? But even if she did, I could never forget you.’ (Is 49:15).
And notice what the Bible says next: ‘I have carved you on the palm of my hand’ (Isaiah 49:16). Every coin is engraved with an image. What image do you bear? The very first chapter of the Bible tells us that we are all created, male and female, in God’s own image. So we are carved by God’s own hand, in his own likeness.
You are precious: What a destiny is yours, planned from all eternity! You are precious. You are made to shine, reflecting the glory of God. But just now you are clouded over and hidden away. Take heart. God’s mother-love and father-love will never give up on you. Know that you will be found.
Now there is a glimmer in the darkness. You see a lovely lady, lighting her lamp. She had ten coins, but she has lost you. Just now she thinks only of you. See the motherly concern on her face. Why are you so dear to her? Hasn’t she nine others?
In Jesus’ days, the mark of a married woman was a headdress made of ten silver coins, linked together by a silver chain. For years, a girl would scrape and save to get together her ten coins. The headdress was like a wedding ring with us. When she had it, it was so much part of her that it couldn’t be taken away even to pay a debt. It was her treasure. See yourself as one of these ten precious coins, so dear to the lady. You have a value far beyond money. She could have said, ‘I’ll sweep the house in the morning to find it.’ But no, she can’t wait.
God seeks us everywhere: Your spirits leap up when you see her taking a broom. In the light of her lamp she sweeps back and forth, into every corner, around every obstacle. This lady looking for her coin, is God looking for you and finding you, now that your faith has been awakened. The lady sees her coin glinting in the light of her lamp. (You had prayed, ‘Holy Spirit, enlighten my heart. Shine the light of your love on me’). Tenderly she lifts you up, stroking you to remove the tiniest fleck of dust.
In her hands you are safe, you are loved, you are cherished. Tell her how you feel. Rest in her hands for a while. Contemplate her beautiful face. She holds you close to her heart. Once again, you mirror God’s image, God’s love-light. Suddenly, you realise you are not a coin any more. You are you, transformed by her love.
The lady’s marriage crown is complete. In this reunion with her, as so often in the Bible’s imagery, you are a privileged guest at the wedding feast. Heaven will be the final and complete union with our loving God. And heaven begins here, when one awakens to this mystery.
The lady invites you and all your friends – as well as her friends to celebrate, singing and dancing with pure delight. Her love enfolds you. All she wants of you is to accept her love, to believe in it even when your life is clouded over. Then you will certainly love and trust her in return.
Jesus joins in: Jesus himself, who has guided you through this story, joins in the celebration. God is one. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one in love. Each loves us. It is not that the Holy Spirit alone loves us with motherly love. You can see from the gospel that Jesus loves us with tender, motherly love, with strong fatherly love, with the love of brother and friend. ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.’ (John 15:13-14).
When you open your eyes, spend a while enjoying the closeness of God, the mother-love of God. Express your love and trust and thanks in whatever way your heart tells you.
Tomorrow, or another day, Jesus will lead you into this story again. Perhaps you will be in a different beautiful scene – by the lake, in a boat, on a hillside, or in a garden or woodland clearing. The coin may be:
– some other lost or needy part of you, in your present life or in the past. We need God’s healing every day
– someone you find it hard to love – someone you need to forgive
– someone or some group now lost in sin, in addiction, in rebellion
– some people who are oppressed, rejected, anguished, broken, or those responsible for the misery of others
– a whole nation – any nation – where God’s image is clouded over.
commentary by Pablo T. Gadenz, Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Trenton (NJ) :
Shepherds like Jesus: The suggested homily in the Rite of Ordination of priests concludes with an exhortation about priestly ministry that echoes Jesus’ words: “Keep always before your eyes the example of the Good Shepherd . . . who came to seek out and save what was lost.”
Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)
11 Then he said, "A man had two sons,
12 and the younger son said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.' So the father divided the property between them.
13 After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.
14 When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need.
15 So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.
16 And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any.
17 Coming to his senses he thought, 'How many of my father's hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger.
18 I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
19 I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers."'
20 So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.
21 His son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.'
22 But his father ordered his servants, 'Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
23 Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast,
24 because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.' Then the celebration began.
25 Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing.
26 He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean.
27 The servant said to him, 'Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'
28 He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him.
29 He said to his father in reply, 'Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.
30 But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.'
31 He said to him, 'My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.
32 But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.'"
Parable of the Prodigal Son: Many have argued the story is actually about the prodigals' Father who represents God, prodigals' (plural) rather than prodigal's (singular). One son had no love for his father, alienated and fell into deep sin, the other had no love for his father but stayed at home with the proper appearances of obedience without love. As many of the stories in Luke, the less likely person receives mercy and in this parable the most extreme sinner in a parable of Jesus is restored to his father while his more proper brother is not. The story passes through unexpected and jarring turns of events for the listeners. The parable ends with a deliberate unfinished nature. We do not know the final response of the run away's brother after the father's appeal to join the feast and the joy over the son who was dead and is now alive. This parable is one of many uses of feasts by Jesus in the parables.
In his apostolic exhortation titled Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (Latin for Reconciliation and Penance), Pope John Paul II used this parable to explain the process of conversion and reconciliation. Emphasizing that God the Father is "rich in mercy" and always ready to forgive, he stated that reconciliation is a gift on his part. He stated that for the Church her "mission of reconciliation is the initiative, full of compassionate love and mercy, of that God who is love."
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
This prodigal son is man every human being: bewitched by the temptation to separate himself from his Father in order to lead his own independent existence; disappointed by the emptiness of the mirage which had fascinated him; alone, dishonored, exploited when he tries to build a world all for himself sorely tried, even in the depths of his own misery, by the desire to return to communion with his Father. Like the father in the parable, God looks out for the return of his child, embraces him when he arrives and orders the banquet of the new meeting with which the reconciliation is celebrated. The most striking element of the parable is the father's festive and loving welcome of the returning son: It is a sign of the mercy of God, who is always willing to forgive. Let us say at once: Reconciliation is principally a gift of the heavenly Father.
But the parable also brings into the picture the elder brother, who refuses to take his place at the banquet. He rebukes his younger brother for his dissolute wanderings, and he rebukes his father for the welcome given to the prodigal son while he himself, a temperate and hard-working person, faithful to father and home, has never been allowed-he says to have a celebration with his friends. This is a sign that he does not understand the father's goodness. To the extent that this brother, too sure of himself and his own good qualities, jealous and haughty, full of bitterness and anger, is not converted and is not reconciled with his father and brother, the banquet is not yet fully the celebration of a reunion and rediscovery.
Man every human being-is also this elder brother. Selfishness makes him jealous, hardens his heart, blinds him and shuts him off from other people and from God. The loving kindness and mercy of the father irritate and enrage him; for him the happiness of the brother who has been found again has a bitter taste.
The parable of the prodigal son is above all the story of the inexpressible love of a Father-God-who offers to his son when he comes back to him the gift of full reconciliation. But when the parable evokes, in the figure of the elder son, the selfishness which divides the brothers, it also becomes the story of the human family: It describes our situation and shows the path to be followed. The prodigal son, in his anxiety for conversion, to return to the arms of his father and to be forgiven, represents those who are aware of the existence in their inmost hearts of a longing for reconciliation at all levels and without reserve, and who realize with an inner certainty that this reconciliation is possible only if it derives from a first and fundamental reconciliation-the one which brings a person back from distant separation to filial friendship with God, whose infinite mercy is clearly known. But if the parable is read from the point of view of the other son, it portrays the situation of the human family, divided by forms of selfishness. It throws light on the difficulty involved in satisfying the desire and longing for one reconciled and united family. It therefore reminds us of the need for a profound transformation of hearts through the rediscovery of the Father's mercy and through victory over misunderstanding and over hostility among brothers and sisters.
In the light of this inexhaustible parable of the mercy that wipes out sin, the church takes up the appeal that the parable contains and grasps her mission of working, in imitation of the Lord, for the conversion of hearts and for the reconciliation of people with God and with one another-these being two realities that are intimately connected.
To acknowledge one's sin, indeed-penetrating still more deeply into the consideration of one's own personhood-to recognize oneself as being a sinner, capable of sin and inclined to commit sin, is the essential first step in returning to God. For example, this is the experience of David, who "having done what is evil in the eyes of the Lord" and having been rebuked by the prophet Nathan, exclaims: "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight." (Psalm 51) Similarly, Jesus himself puts the following significant words on the lips and in the heart of the prodigal son: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you"
Perhaps the most beautiful of Jesus’ parables, this story is also known as the parable of the prodigal son. It is true that the figure of the prodigal son is so vividly drawn and his destiny, both in good and in evil, is so heart-rending that he inevitably appears to be the real center of the story. In reality, though, the parable has three protagonists. Jeremias and others have suggested that it would actually be better to call it the parable of the good father—that he is the true center of the text.
Let us now attempt to follow the parable step by step. The first figure we meet is that of the prodigal son, but right at the beginning we also see the magnanimity of the father. He complies with the younger son’s wish for his share of the property and divides up the inheritance. He gives freedom. He can imagine what the younger son is going to do, but he lets him go his way.
The son journeys “into a far country.”. The Church Fathers read this above all as interior estrangement from the world of the father—the world of God—as interior rupture of relation, as the great abandonment of all that is authentically one’s own. The son squanders his inheritance. He just wants to enjoy himself. He wants to scoop life out till there is nothing left. He wants to have “life in abundance” as he understands it. He no longer wants to be subject to any commandment, any authority. He seeks radical freedom. He wants to live only for himself, free of any other claim. He enjoys life; he feels that he is completely autonomous.
Is it difficult for us to see clearly reflected here the spirit of the modern rebellion against God and God’s law? The leaving behind of everything we once depended on and the will to a freedom without limits? At the end it is all gone. He who was once completely free is now truly a slave—a swineherd, who would be happy to be given pig feed to eat. Those who understand freedom as the radically arbitrary license to do just what they want and to have their own way are living in a lie, for by his very nature man is part of a shared existence and his freedom is shared freedom. His very nature contains direction and norm, and becoming inwardly one with this direction and norm is what freedom is all about. A false autonomy thus leads to slavery: In the meantime history has taught us this all too clearly. For Jews the pig is an unclean animal, which means that the swineherd is the expression of man’s most extreme alienation and destitution. The totally free man has become a wretched slave.
At this point the “conversion” takes place. The prodigal son realizes that he is lost—that at home he was free and that his father’s servants are freer than he now is, who had once considered himself completely free. “He went into himself,” the Gospel says (Lk 15:17). As with the passage about the “far country,” these words set the Church Fathers thinking philosophically: Living far away from home, from his origin, this man had also strayed far away from himself. He lived away from the truth of his existence.
His change of heart, his “conversion,” consists in his recognition of this, his realization that he has become alienated and wandered into truly “alien lands,” and his return to himself. What he finds in himself, though, is the compass pointing toward the father, toward the true freedom of a “son.” The speech he prepares for his homecoming reveals to us the full extent of the inner pilgrimage he is now making. His words show that his whole life is now a steady progress leading “home”—through so many deserts—to himself and to the father. He is on a pilgrimage toward the truth of his existence, and that means “homeward.” When the Church Fathers offer us this “existential” exposition of the son’s journey home, they are also explaining to us what “conversion” is, what sort of sufferings and inner purifications it involves, and we may safely say that they have understood the essence of the parable correctly and help us to realize its relevance for today.
The father “sees the son from far off” and goes out to meet him. He listens to the son’s confession and perceives in it the interior journey that he has made; he perceives that the son has found the way to true freedom. So he does not even let him finish, but embraces and kisses him and orders a great feast of joy to be prepared. The cause of this joy is that the son, who was already “dead” when he departed with his share of the property, is now alive again, has risen from the dead; “he was lost, and is found” (Lk 15:32).
The Church Fathers put all their love into their exposition of this scene. The lost son they take as an image of man as such, of “Adam,” who all of us are—of Adam whom God has gone out to meet and whom he has received anew into his house. In the parable, the father orders the servants to bring quickly “the first robe.” For the Fathers, this “first robe” is a reference to the lost robe of grace with which man had been originally clothed, but which he forfeited by sin. But now this “first robe” is given back to him—the robe of the son. The feast that is now made ready they read as an image of the feast of faith, the festive Eucharist, in which the eternal festal banquet is anticipated. To cite the Greek text literally, what the first brother hears when he comes home is “symphony and choirs”—again for the Fathers an image for the symphony of the faith, which makes being a Christian a joy and a feast.
But the kernel of the text surely does not lie in these details; the kernel is now unmistakably the figure of the father. Can we understand him? Can a father, may a father act like this? Because God is God, the Holy One, he acts as no man could act. God has a heart, and this heart turns, so to speak, against God himself: Here in Hosea, as in the Gospel, we encounter once again the word compassion, which is expressed by means of the image of the maternal womb. God’s heart transforms wrath and turns punishment into forgiveness.
For the Christian, the question now arises: Where does Jesus Christ fit into all this? Only the Father figures in the parable. Is there no Christology in it? Pierre Grelot has discovered an interpretation that accords with the text and goes even deeper. He draws attention to the fact that Jesus uses this parable, along with the two preceding ones, to justify his own goodness toward sinners; he uses the behavior of the father in the parable to justify the fact that he too welcomes sinners. By the way he acts, then, Jesus himself becomes “the revelation of the one he called his Father.” Attention to the historical context of the parable thus yields by itself an “implicit Christology.” “His Passion and his Resurrection reinforce this point still further: How did God show his merciful love for sinners? In that ‘while we were yet sinners Christ died for us’ (Rom 5:8).” “Jesus cannot enter into the narrative framework of the parable because he lives in identification with the heavenly Father and bases his conduct on the Father’s. The risen Christ remains today, in this point, in the same situation as Jesus of Nazareth during the time of his earthly ministry” (pp. 228f.). Indeed: In this parable, Jesus justifies his own conduct by relating it to, and identifying it with, the Father’s. It is in the figure of the father, then, that Christ—the concrete realization of the father’s action—is placed right at the heart of the parable.
The older brother now makes his appearance. He comes home from working in the fields, hears feasting at home, finds out why, and becomes angry. He finds it simply unfair that this good-for-nothing, who has squandered his entire fortune—the father’s property—with prostitutes, should now be given a splendid feast straightaway without any period of probation, without any time of penance. That contradicts his sense of justice: The life he has spent working is made to look of no account in comparison to the dissolute past of the other. Bitterness arises in him: “Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed one of your commands,” he says to his father, “yet you never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends” (Lk 15:29). The father goes out to meet the older brother, too, and now he speaks kindly to his son. The older brother knows nothing of the inner transformations and wanderings experienced by the younger brother, of his journey into distant parts, of his fall and his new self-discovery. He sees only injustice. And this betrays the fact that he too had secretly dreamed of a freedom without limits, that his obedience has made him inwardly bitter, and that he has no awareness of the grace of being at home, of the true freedom that he enjoys as a son. “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Lk 15:31). The father explains to him the great value of sonship with these words—the same words that Jesus uses in his high-priestly prayer to describe his relationship to the Father: “All that is mine is thine, and all that is thine is mine” (Jn 17:10).
The parable breaks off here; it tells us nothing about the older brother’s reaction. Nor can it, because at this point the parable immediately passes over into reality. Jesus is using these words of the father to speak to the heart of the murmuring Pharisees and scribes who have grown indignant at his goodness to sinners (cf. Lk 15:2). It now becomes fully clear that Jesus identifies his goodness to sinners with the goodness of the father in the parable and that all the words attributed to the father are the words that he himself addresses to the righteous. The parable does not tell the story of some distant affair, but is about what is happening here and now through him. He is wooing the heart of his adversaries. He begs them to come in and to share his joy at this hour of homecoming and reconciliation. These words remain in the Gospel as a pleading invitation. Paul takes up this pleading invitation when he writes: “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20).
The Church Fathers generally applied the two-brothers motif to the relation between Jews and Gentiles. It was not hard for them to recognize in the dissolute son who had strayed far from God and from himself an image of the pagan world, to which Jesus had now opened the door for communion with God in grace and for which he now celebrates the feast of his love. By the same token, neither was it hard for them to recognize in the brother who remained at home an image of the people of Israel, who could legitimately say “Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed one of your commands.” Israel’s fidelity and image of God are clearly revealed in such fidelity to the Torah. This application to the Jews is not illegitimate so long as we respect the form in which we have found it in the text: as God’s delicate attempt to talk Israel around, which remains entirely God’s initiative. We should note that the father in the parable not only does not dispute the older brother’s fidelity, but explicitly confirms his sonship: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”
While we may regard this application of the parable of the two brothers to Israel and the Gentiles as one dimension of the text, there are other dimensions as well. After all, what Jesus says about the older brother is aimed not simply at Israel (the sinners who came to him were Jews, too), but at the specific temptation of the righteous, of those who are “en règle,” at rights with God. For them, more than anything else God is Law; they see themselves in a juridical relationship with God and in that relationship they are at rights with him. But God is greater: They need to convert from the Law-God to the greater God, the God of love. This will not mean giving up their obedience, but rather that this obedience will flow from deeper wellsprings and will therefore be bigger, more open, and purer, but above all more humble.
Let us add a further aspect that has already been touched upon: Their bitterness toward God’s goodness reveals an inward bitterness regarding their own obedience, a bitterness that indicates the limitations of this obedience. In their heart of hearts, they would have gladly journeyed out into that great “freedom” as well. There is an unspoken envy of what others have been able to get away with. They have not gone through the pilgrimage that purified the younger brother and made him realize what it means to be free and what it means to be a son. They actually carry their freedom as if it were slavery and they have not matured to real sonship. They, too, are still in need of a path; they can find it if they simply admit that God is right and accept his feast as their own. In this parable, then, the Father through Christ is addressing us, the ones who never left home, encouraging us too to convert truly and to find joy in our faith.
comments by Catholic Enquiry Centre (New Zealand): |
| Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglican Church , Ashfield, New South Wales. |
2 but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
3 So to them he addressed this parable.
4 "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?
5 And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy
6 and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.'
7 I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.
8 "Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it?
9 And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.'
10 In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
comments by Association of Catholic Priests https://www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie:
In Luke’s account, Jesus never misses an opportunity to join in a dinner-party. Many of the great discourses in this gospel were delivered at the dining table of his wealthy hosts. Both parables conclude with a happy retriever of lost goods [a lost sheep or lost silver pieces] inviting friends and neighbours in and bidding them, ‘Rejoice with me!’ and such happy occasion are compared with God’s own joy in heaven over one repentant sinner, which is greater than over the ninety-nine righteous who have no need to repent. Each of us is reflected both in the ninety-nine sheep that are always accountable, and in the one lost sheep that wanders off and is reluctant to live under control. We have ideas and talents that we understand and try to carefully direct. They are always with us and we are quietly proud of them. These constitute the 99% righteous part of ourselves that has “no need to repent.” But perhaps God has also poured an unruly talent or quality into us. Stretching the parable a bit, we might say that this easily lost part of ourselves can be a unique opportunity crossing our path.
comments by Irish Dominicans:
In Luke, chapter 15 we read about the lady who has ten coins, and loses one. She lights a lamp and sweeps the floor until she finds it. As in the other stories she, too, calls in her friends and neighbours to rejoice with her because she has found it. And each time Jesus’ message is, ‘Just so, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine good people who don’t need to repent.
The man searching for the lost sheep is Jesus, the good shepherd who will give his life for his sheep.
The lady who lost the coin – who is she an image of? She too, of course, is an image of God, of the mother-love of God. Jesus is leading us to see that in God, every good and wonderful kind of love is multiplied infinitely: father-love, mother-love, the love of spouses and friends. We need to accept all those kinds of love from God. Men, women and children need to experience the mother-love of God.
After the Christmas events, St. Luke tells us that ‘Mary treasured all these things in her heart’ (2:19). We need to do the same. In time, we will become more like her in our ability to mirror God’s mother-love to others.
Be the coin
You are lying there in the in the dust of an earthen floor. The house is dark. The floor is cluttered and uneven. Like every other coin, you were made to shine. Why then are you here, covered with dust? What is this dust that clouds your image? Is it sadness, worry, anger, guilt, pain, loneliness, even despair? Or is it just a little coating of dust, suggesting that you haven’t had much time to enjoy God’s love and closeness during the past days or months or years? Or is it that you feel God is hiding from you?
You need to spend time every day, even in the darkness, waiting, hoping, trusting. The mother-love of God will break through to you. ‘Can a mother forget her baby? But even if she did, I could never forget you.’ (Is 49:15).
And notice what the Bible says next: ‘I have carved you on the palm of my hand’ (Isaiah 49:16). Every coin is engraved with an image. What image do you bear? The very first chapter of the Bible tells us that we are all created, male and female, in God’s own image. So we are carved by God’s own hand, in his own likeness.
You are precious: What a destiny is yours, planned from all eternity! You are precious. You are made to shine, reflecting the glory of God. But just now you are clouded over and hidden away. Take heart. God’s mother-love and father-love will never give up on you. Know that you will be found.
Now there is a glimmer in the darkness. You see a lovely lady, lighting her lamp. She had ten coins, but she has lost you. Just now she thinks only of you. See the motherly concern on her face. Why are you so dear to her? Hasn’t she nine others?
In Jesus’ days, the mark of a married woman was a headdress made of ten silver coins, linked together by a silver chain. For years, a girl would scrape and save to get together her ten coins. The headdress was like a wedding ring with us. When she had it, it was so much part of her that it couldn’t be taken away even to pay a debt. It was her treasure. See yourself as one of these ten precious coins, so dear to the lady. You have a value far beyond money. She could have said, ‘I’ll sweep the house in the morning to find it.’ But no, she can’t wait.
God seeks us everywhere: Your spirits leap up when you see her taking a broom. In the light of her lamp she sweeps back and forth, into every corner, around every obstacle. This lady looking for her coin, is God looking for you and finding you, now that your faith has been awakened. The lady sees her coin glinting in the light of her lamp. (You had prayed, ‘Holy Spirit, enlighten my heart. Shine the light of your love on me’). Tenderly she lifts you up, stroking you to remove the tiniest fleck of dust.
In her hands you are safe, you are loved, you are cherished. Tell her how you feel. Rest in her hands for a while. Contemplate her beautiful face. She holds you close to her heart. Once again, you mirror God’s image, God’s love-light. Suddenly, you realise you are not a coin any more. You are you, transformed by her love.
The lady’s marriage crown is complete. In this reunion with her, as so often in the Bible’s imagery, you are a privileged guest at the wedding feast. Heaven will be the final and complete union with our loving God. And heaven begins here, when one awakens to this mystery.
The lady invites you and all your friends – as well as her friends to celebrate, singing and dancing with pure delight. Her love enfolds you. All she wants of you is to accept her love, to believe in it even when your life is clouded over. Then you will certainly love and trust her in return.
Jesus joins in: Jesus himself, who has guided you through this story, joins in the celebration. God is one. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one in love. Each loves us. It is not that the Holy Spirit alone loves us with motherly love. You can see from the gospel that Jesus loves us with tender, motherly love, with strong fatherly love, with the love of brother and friend. ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.’ (John 15:13-14).
When you open your eyes, spend a while enjoying the closeness of God, the mother-love of God. Express your love and trust and thanks in whatever way your heart tells you.
Tomorrow, or another day, Jesus will lead you into this story again. Perhaps you will be in a different beautiful scene – by the lake, in a boat, on a hillside, or in a garden or woodland clearing. The coin may be:
– some other lost or needy part of you, in your present life or in the past. We need God’s healing every day
– someone you find it hard to love – someone you need to forgive
– someone or some group now lost in sin, in addiction, in rebellion
– some people who are oppressed, rejected, anguished, broken, or those responsible for the misery of others
– a whole nation – any nation – where God’s image is clouded over.
commentary by Pablo T. Gadenz, Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Trenton (NJ) :
Shepherds like Jesus: The suggested homily in the Rite of Ordination of priests concludes with an exhortation about priestly ministry that echoes Jesus’ words: “Keep always before your eyes the example of the Good Shepherd . . . who came to seek out and save what was lost.”
Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)
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| Bartolome Esteban Murillo - The Prodigal son receives his inheritance (1665) |
12 and the younger son said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.' So the father divided the property between them.
13 After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.
14 When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need.
15 So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.
16 And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any.
17 Coming to his senses he thought, 'How many of my father's hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger.
18 I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
19 I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers."'
20 So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.
21 His son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.'
22 But his father ordered his servants, 'Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
23 Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast,
24 because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.' Then the celebration began.
25 Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing.
26 He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean.
27 The servant said to him, 'Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'
28 He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him.
29 He said to his father in reply, 'Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.
30 But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.'
31 He said to him, 'My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.
32 But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.'"
Parable of the Prodigal Son: Many have argued the story is actually about the prodigals' Father who represents God, prodigals' (plural) rather than prodigal's (singular). One son had no love for his father, alienated and fell into deep sin, the other had no love for his father but stayed at home with the proper appearances of obedience without love. As many of the stories in Luke, the less likely person receives mercy and in this parable the most extreme sinner in a parable of Jesus is restored to his father while his more proper brother is not. The story passes through unexpected and jarring turns of events for the listeners. The parable ends with a deliberate unfinished nature. We do not know the final response of the run away's brother after the father's appeal to join the feast and the joy over the son who was dead and is now alive. This parable is one of many uses of feasts by Jesus in the parables.
In his apostolic exhortation titled Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (Latin for Reconciliation and Penance), Pope John Paul II used this parable to explain the process of conversion and reconciliation. Emphasizing that God the Father is "rich in mercy" and always ready to forgive, he stated that reconciliation is a gift on his part. He stated that for the Church her "mission of reconciliation is the initiative, full of compassionate love and mercy, of that God who is love."
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
This prodigal son is man every human being: bewitched by the temptation to separate himself from his Father in order to lead his own independent existence; disappointed by the emptiness of the mirage which had fascinated him; alone, dishonored, exploited when he tries to build a world all for himself sorely tried, even in the depths of his own misery, by the desire to return to communion with his Father. Like the father in the parable, God looks out for the return of his child, embraces him when he arrives and orders the banquet of the new meeting with which the reconciliation is celebrated. The most striking element of the parable is the father's festive and loving welcome of the returning son: It is a sign of the mercy of God, who is always willing to forgive. Let us say at once: Reconciliation is principally a gift of the heavenly Father.
But the parable also brings into the picture the elder brother, who refuses to take his place at the banquet. He rebukes his younger brother for his dissolute wanderings, and he rebukes his father for the welcome given to the prodigal son while he himself, a temperate and hard-working person, faithful to father and home, has never been allowed-he says to have a celebration with his friends. This is a sign that he does not understand the father's goodness. To the extent that this brother, too sure of himself and his own good qualities, jealous and haughty, full of bitterness and anger, is not converted and is not reconciled with his father and brother, the banquet is not yet fully the celebration of a reunion and rediscovery.
Man every human being-is also this elder brother. Selfishness makes him jealous, hardens his heart, blinds him and shuts him off from other people and from God. The loving kindness and mercy of the father irritate and enrage him; for him the happiness of the brother who has been found again has a bitter taste.
The parable of the prodigal son is above all the story of the inexpressible love of a Father-God-who offers to his son when he comes back to him the gift of full reconciliation. But when the parable evokes, in the figure of the elder son, the selfishness which divides the brothers, it also becomes the story of the human family: It describes our situation and shows the path to be followed. The prodigal son, in his anxiety for conversion, to return to the arms of his father and to be forgiven, represents those who are aware of the existence in their inmost hearts of a longing for reconciliation at all levels and without reserve, and who realize with an inner certainty that this reconciliation is possible only if it derives from a first and fundamental reconciliation-the one which brings a person back from distant separation to filial friendship with God, whose infinite mercy is clearly known. But if the parable is read from the point of view of the other son, it portrays the situation of the human family, divided by forms of selfishness. It throws light on the difficulty involved in satisfying the desire and longing for one reconciled and united family. It therefore reminds us of the need for a profound transformation of hearts through the rediscovery of the Father's mercy and through victory over misunderstanding and over hostility among brothers and sisters.
In the light of this inexhaustible parable of the mercy that wipes out sin, the church takes up the appeal that the parable contains and grasps her mission of working, in imitation of the Lord, for the conversion of hearts and for the reconciliation of people with God and with one another-these being two realities that are intimately connected.
To acknowledge one's sin, indeed-penetrating still more deeply into the consideration of one's own personhood-to recognize oneself as being a sinner, capable of sin and inclined to commit sin, is the essential first step in returning to God. For example, this is the experience of David, who "having done what is evil in the eyes of the Lord" and having been rebuked by the prophet Nathan, exclaims: "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight." (Psalm 51) Similarly, Jesus himself puts the following significant words on the lips and in the heart of the prodigal son: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you"
Perhaps the most beautiful of Jesus’ parables, this story is also known as the parable of the prodigal son. It is true that the figure of the prodigal son is so vividly drawn and his destiny, both in good and in evil, is so heart-rending that he inevitably appears to be the real center of the story. In reality, though, the parable has three protagonists. Jeremias and others have suggested that it would actually be better to call it the parable of the good father—that he is the true center of the text.
Let us now attempt to follow the parable step by step. The first figure we meet is that of the prodigal son, but right at the beginning we also see the magnanimity of the father. He complies with the younger son’s wish for his share of the property and divides up the inheritance. He gives freedom. He can imagine what the younger son is going to do, but he lets him go his way.
The son journeys “into a far country.”. The Church Fathers read this above all as interior estrangement from the world of the father—the world of God—as interior rupture of relation, as the great abandonment of all that is authentically one’s own. The son squanders his inheritance. He just wants to enjoy himself. He wants to scoop life out till there is nothing left. He wants to have “life in abundance” as he understands it. He no longer wants to be subject to any commandment, any authority. He seeks radical freedom. He wants to live only for himself, free of any other claim. He enjoys life; he feels that he is completely autonomous.
Is it difficult for us to see clearly reflected here the spirit of the modern rebellion against God and God’s law? The leaving behind of everything we once depended on and the will to a freedom without limits? At the end it is all gone. He who was once completely free is now truly a slave—a swineherd, who would be happy to be given pig feed to eat. Those who understand freedom as the radically arbitrary license to do just what they want and to have their own way are living in a lie, for by his very nature man is part of a shared existence and his freedom is shared freedom. His very nature contains direction and norm, and becoming inwardly one with this direction and norm is what freedom is all about. A false autonomy thus leads to slavery: In the meantime history has taught us this all too clearly. For Jews the pig is an unclean animal, which means that the swineherd is the expression of man’s most extreme alienation and destitution. The totally free man has become a wretched slave.
At this point the “conversion” takes place. The prodigal son realizes that he is lost—that at home he was free and that his father’s servants are freer than he now is, who had once considered himself completely free. “He went into himself,” the Gospel says (Lk 15:17). As with the passage about the “far country,” these words set the Church Fathers thinking philosophically: Living far away from home, from his origin, this man had also strayed far away from himself. He lived away from the truth of his existence.
His change of heart, his “conversion,” consists in his recognition of this, his realization that he has become alienated and wandered into truly “alien lands,” and his return to himself. What he finds in himself, though, is the compass pointing toward the father, toward the true freedom of a “son.” The speech he prepares for his homecoming reveals to us the full extent of the inner pilgrimage he is now making. His words show that his whole life is now a steady progress leading “home”—through so many deserts—to himself and to the father. He is on a pilgrimage toward the truth of his existence, and that means “homeward.” When the Church Fathers offer us this “existential” exposition of the son’s journey home, they are also explaining to us what “conversion” is, what sort of sufferings and inner purifications it involves, and we may safely say that they have understood the essence of the parable correctly and help us to realize its relevance for today.
The father “sees the son from far off” and goes out to meet him. He listens to the son’s confession and perceives in it the interior journey that he has made; he perceives that the son has found the way to true freedom. So he does not even let him finish, but embraces and kisses him and orders a great feast of joy to be prepared. The cause of this joy is that the son, who was already “dead” when he departed with his share of the property, is now alive again, has risen from the dead; “he was lost, and is found” (Lk 15:32).
The Church Fathers put all their love into their exposition of this scene. The lost son they take as an image of man as such, of “Adam,” who all of us are—of Adam whom God has gone out to meet and whom he has received anew into his house. In the parable, the father orders the servants to bring quickly “the first robe.” For the Fathers, this “first robe” is a reference to the lost robe of grace with which man had been originally clothed, but which he forfeited by sin. But now this “first robe” is given back to him—the robe of the son. The feast that is now made ready they read as an image of the feast of faith, the festive Eucharist, in which the eternal festal banquet is anticipated. To cite the Greek text literally, what the first brother hears when he comes home is “symphony and choirs”—again for the Fathers an image for the symphony of the faith, which makes being a Christian a joy and a feast.
But the kernel of the text surely does not lie in these details; the kernel is now unmistakably the figure of the father. Can we understand him? Can a father, may a father act like this? Because God is God, the Holy One, he acts as no man could act. God has a heart, and this heart turns, so to speak, against God himself: Here in Hosea, as in the Gospel, we encounter once again the word compassion, which is expressed by means of the image of the maternal womb. God’s heart transforms wrath and turns punishment into forgiveness.
For the Christian, the question now arises: Where does Jesus Christ fit into all this? Only the Father figures in the parable. Is there no Christology in it? Pierre Grelot has discovered an interpretation that accords with the text and goes even deeper. He draws attention to the fact that Jesus uses this parable, along with the two preceding ones, to justify his own goodness toward sinners; he uses the behavior of the father in the parable to justify the fact that he too welcomes sinners. By the way he acts, then, Jesus himself becomes “the revelation of the one he called his Father.” Attention to the historical context of the parable thus yields by itself an “implicit Christology.” “His Passion and his Resurrection reinforce this point still further: How did God show his merciful love for sinners? In that ‘while we were yet sinners Christ died for us’ (Rom 5:8).” “Jesus cannot enter into the narrative framework of the parable because he lives in identification with the heavenly Father and bases his conduct on the Father’s. The risen Christ remains today, in this point, in the same situation as Jesus of Nazareth during the time of his earthly ministry” (pp. 228f.). Indeed: In this parable, Jesus justifies his own conduct by relating it to, and identifying it with, the Father’s. It is in the figure of the father, then, that Christ—the concrete realization of the father’s action—is placed right at the heart of the parable.
The older brother now makes his appearance. He comes home from working in the fields, hears feasting at home, finds out why, and becomes angry. He finds it simply unfair that this good-for-nothing, who has squandered his entire fortune—the father’s property—with prostitutes, should now be given a splendid feast straightaway without any period of probation, without any time of penance. That contradicts his sense of justice: The life he has spent working is made to look of no account in comparison to the dissolute past of the other. Bitterness arises in him: “Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed one of your commands,” he says to his father, “yet you never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends” (Lk 15:29). The father goes out to meet the older brother, too, and now he speaks kindly to his son. The older brother knows nothing of the inner transformations and wanderings experienced by the younger brother, of his journey into distant parts, of his fall and his new self-discovery. He sees only injustice. And this betrays the fact that he too had secretly dreamed of a freedom without limits, that his obedience has made him inwardly bitter, and that he has no awareness of the grace of being at home, of the true freedom that he enjoys as a son. “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Lk 15:31). The father explains to him the great value of sonship with these words—the same words that Jesus uses in his high-priestly prayer to describe his relationship to the Father: “All that is mine is thine, and all that is thine is mine” (Jn 17:10).
The parable breaks off here; it tells us nothing about the older brother’s reaction. Nor can it, because at this point the parable immediately passes over into reality. Jesus is using these words of the father to speak to the heart of the murmuring Pharisees and scribes who have grown indignant at his goodness to sinners (cf. Lk 15:2). It now becomes fully clear that Jesus identifies his goodness to sinners with the goodness of the father in the parable and that all the words attributed to the father are the words that he himself addresses to the righteous. The parable does not tell the story of some distant affair, but is about what is happening here and now through him. He is wooing the heart of his adversaries. He begs them to come in and to share his joy at this hour of homecoming and reconciliation. These words remain in the Gospel as a pleading invitation. Paul takes up this pleading invitation when he writes: “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20).
The Church Fathers generally applied the two-brothers motif to the relation between Jews and Gentiles. It was not hard for them to recognize in the dissolute son who had strayed far from God and from himself an image of the pagan world, to which Jesus had now opened the door for communion with God in grace and for which he now celebrates the feast of his love. By the same token, neither was it hard for them to recognize in the brother who remained at home an image of the people of Israel, who could legitimately say “Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed one of your commands.” Israel’s fidelity and image of God are clearly revealed in such fidelity to the Torah. This application to the Jews is not illegitimate so long as we respect the form in which we have found it in the text: as God’s delicate attempt to talk Israel around, which remains entirely God’s initiative. We should note that the father in the parable not only does not dispute the older brother’s fidelity, but explicitly confirms his sonship: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”
While we may regard this application of the parable of the two brothers to Israel and the Gentiles as one dimension of the text, there are other dimensions as well. After all, what Jesus says about the older brother is aimed not simply at Israel (the sinners who came to him were Jews, too), but at the specific temptation of the righteous, of those who are “en règle,” at rights with God. For them, more than anything else God is Law; they see themselves in a juridical relationship with God and in that relationship they are at rights with him. But God is greater: They need to convert from the Law-God to the greater God, the God of love. This will not mean giving up their obedience, but rather that this obedience will flow from deeper wellsprings and will therefore be bigger, more open, and purer, but above all more humble.
Let us add a further aspect that has already been touched upon: Their bitterness toward God’s goodness reveals an inward bitterness regarding their own obedience, a bitterness that indicates the limitations of this obedience. In their heart of hearts, they would have gladly journeyed out into that great “freedom” as well. There is an unspoken envy of what others have been able to get away with. They have not gone through the pilgrimage that purified the younger brother and made him realize what it means to be free and what it means to be a son. They actually carry their freedom as if it were slavery and they have not matured to real sonship. They, too, are still in need of a path; they can find it if they simply admit that God is right and accept his feast as their own. In this parable, then, the Father through Christ is addressing us, the ones who never left home, encouraging us too to convert truly and to find joy in our faith.
The story is often viewed as being about the forgiveness of the father, the “seeing of the light” of the younger son, and the jealousy of the older son. However one virtue links all three people involved, either in its presence or its absence – generosity.
Initially the younger son was selfish, wanting to withdraw his share of the property without consideration of how that might affect the family’s joint fortunes. He was lacking in the generosity which would have allowed all to continue to share in the benefits of both his labour and his assets. He wanted them for himself, and in being given them, immaturity promptly led him to lose them.
The older son was initially generous in that he continued to contribute to the family’s work and wealth. However his generosity could not stretch as far as forgiving and welcoming his brother after he had squandered his assets.
The father was generous in allowing the younger son to experience independence, and generous in forgiving him. Generosity is often a pre-requisite for both letting someone or something go, and for being able to forgive. The father was also generous in his kind response to the older brother.
Immature sibling relationships can emerge in families even when all the members are adults, even middle-aged or older. Brothers and sisters are a precious gift. Adult conflict between siblings is profoundly distressing, especially for parents, but also for the siblings involved and those who are bystanders. Members of a family should always be able to rely upon one another for love, acceptance and support.
Lent offers an opportunity to look into those feelings, often originating in childhood, which can lead to strained family relationships. Streaks of immaturity can continue to exist below the surface even in mature adults. Growth in generosity, and the way its enables forgiveness, can release us from immaturity in our family relationships and lead us into new relationships with people we have known all our lives.
commentary by Pablo T. Gadenz, Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Trenton (NJ) :
St. Augustine is one of many Church Fathers who interpret the two sons in terms of Israel and the nations: “The man who has two sons is God who has two peoples; the elder son is the people of the Jews, the younger the people of the Gentiles.” He reflects on the parable with the help of Paul: “A hardening has come upon Israel in part, until the full number of the Gentiles comes in, and thus all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:25-26):
When the fullness of the Gentiles has entered, therefore, his father will go out at the right time so that all of Israel may also be saved. Its blindness was partly caused as though in the case of him who was absent in the field, until the fullness of the younger son, who was living far away in the idolatry of the Gentiles, returned and entered to eat the calf. For the calling of the Jews to the salvation of the Gospel will eventually be manifest. He calls the disclosure of their calling the father’s going out to plead with the elder son.
The scene of reconciliation between the father and the younger son echoes several Old Testament narratives. For example, when Isaac’s younger son, Jacob, returns from a distant country (Paddan-aram), he meets his estranged older brother, Esau. “Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him” (Gen 33:4 NRSV), details similar to the younger son’s return, where the father “ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him” (15:20 KJV).
The reunion between Jacob/Israel and his son Joseph is described similarly: “Joseph . . . went up to meet his father Israel in Goshen. He presented himself to him, fell on his neck . . .” (Gen 46:29 NRSV). The story of Joseph and his estranged brothers also has parallels in the parable. Like the younger son, Joseph goes to a distant country (Egypt) but ends up receiving a “robe” and “ring” (Luke 15:22; Gen 41:42 LXX). A “famine” (Luke 15:14; Gen 41:54; 42:5) occurs, which leads to the reconciliation of the brothers and the reunion of father and son.
Jesus dismisses the Samaritan with the same words he spoke to other marginalized people whom he healed or forgave: Your faith has saved you (7:50; 8:48; 18:42). The Greek verb for “save” (sözö) also means “heal,” pointing on one level to the miracle. However, Jesus’ words suggest that the Samaritan received more than the physical healing that all ten lepers received. Luke’s readers would thus be reminded that faith in Jesus leads to salvation (Rom 10:9; Eph 2:8). Earlier, a Samaritan in a parable became a model of compassionate, merciful love (Luke 10:27, 33, 37). Now a real-life Samaritan has become a model of grateful, saving faith. He anticipates the Samaritan people's later response of faith (Acts 8:12).
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