February 8th, 2026: Prodigal Son

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory to Christ. In the

name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the

Holy Spirit. Amen. We've come to a very important

moment on this day in our preparation for Great

Lent. This parable of the prodigal son, which

is very tempting to speak on every single verse.

It's so profound. It's so immediately relevant.

But this is not a Bible study. It's a brief homily.

I hope it's going to be brief. This is the third

of three parables in chapter 15 of St. Luke.

All three are about God's love for us. How he

seeks us. How he seeks what is lost. The Lord

speaks of the shepherd and the lost sheep. The

Lord speaks of the housewife and the lost coin.

And what happiness they both had, what joy they

had. They called their friends to come and rejoice.

And the climax of chapter 15 is our parable today,

the father and the lost son. Lost sheep, lost

coin, and now a lost son. And the joy that the

father feels at his return. Suppose we could

call this the parable of the prodigal son and

the merciful father and the hard -hearted son.

All three pointing to the same thing. God is

not passively waiting for us. He didn't just

wind us up and see where it all goes. He seeks

us in love. And all three completely negate the

idea, listen carefully, that man sinned, which

he did, broke a rule, and now Jesus is going

to pay a fine, you know, to release mankind from

the sake of appeasing either an angry God or

appeasing something called divine justice or

something like that. We simply don't see God

in this legalistic way. You were bought with

a price. You are precious before God. Glorify

God in your body, says St. Paul in that epistle.

That epistle is like a commentary on this gospel.

It could be for some here that you see yourself

in this parable, perhaps. that you've come a

long way and here you are. Or maybe you have

a person in your life that you grieve about,

you pray about, you hope that he or she will

come to himself and to God. However it is you

relate personally, there's something more here.

It's universal, of course. Consider the words

of Father Alexander Schmemann from the book Great

Lent. It's the book that I have the catechumens

read. He says, often we overlook something essential

in our repentance with Christ. This something

is precisely the feeling of alienation from God.

The young man came to himself. He realized he

was in a far place. He was alienated from his

father, from the joy of communion with him, from

the real life as created and given by God. It

is indeed easy to confess. When we come to confession,

that I've not fasted on the prescribed days,

I miss my prayers, I became angry. It's quite

a different thing, he says, however, to realize

suddenly that I have defiled and lost my spiritual

body because I'm far from God, and that I'm far

away from my real home, my real life, and that

something precious and pure and beautiful has

been hopelessly broken. Any soul, says Elder

Emelianos of Mount Athos, can go to confession,

can read spiritual books, can pray much, can

shed copious tears, or just go to church every

week without the sense of sin and loss and restoration

and joy that this parable describes. The point

here that I'm making is not so that we should

feel bad about ourselves. No, the point here

is about repentance, learning how to do it, because

we vacillate between two sides. Either we have

sinned so badly, so wretchedly, that God will

never forgive us, we feel, or else we feel, I'm

okay. No sins. I'm pretty good. Either one, it's

not reality of the condition of our soul and

the love of God. Because in repentance, if we

forget that God is merciful and seeks us, we

won't get it. This is about restoring a relationship

that is broken, that is lost. And it's how extravagantly

our Lord has gone to restore us. Notice this.

The parable says the younger son asks for his

inheritance. If I went to my parents and I said,

Dad, I want my inheritance now. What is that

saying to him? It's saying to him, you don't

matter to me. You're dead to me. I just want

what's coming. So the younger son asks for his

inheritance. Well, number one. You don't ask

for an inheritance until the parent dies. So

how thoughtless that is. Number two, it's the

older son, the firstborn son, who would actually

inherit everything in that culture, all of it,

100 % from the father, and only then would he

distribute it to the other son or sons. I have

to imagine, Father Daniel maybe can correct me

as the biblical scholar he is, that those listening

to Jesus speak this parable would reject this

idea. They'd laugh at how God is not like that.

This man is a fool. This is overly generous.

But we're speaking of divine generosity here,

not human laws of inheritance. The great metropolitan

Anthony Bloom of London spoke about this parable.

He said the father, keeping watch for his son,

standing there, waiting for him, always waiting

and going out further and further to look for

him, suddenly saw a beggar, a man in rags, coming

in a faltering manner, tired, tired to exhaustion,

with a soul even more desperately tired than

his body. The father sees this man and recognizes

him immediately, heart speaking to heart, and

he rushed towards him, like that wonderful stanza

in the canon of St. Andrew, like the father rushing

out to meet the prodigal son. And he sees him,

and he embraces him in his arms, and the boy

falls to his feet and begins his confession.

Father. I have sinned against heaven and before

thee. I am no longer worthy to be called thy

son. But at that moment, the father interrupts

him and does not let him even say that. He does

not allow him to say, receive me as one of your

servants, your slaves. He could in no way become

a stranger. He took him in his arms, brought

him to the house, and the father says, bring

him the best robe. There's some debate here.

It probably says bring him the first robe, which

is the best robe, the best robe to clad him in

novelty and beauty. No, what he says is bring

his first robe, the one I discarded when he left,

the one he discarded, the one that he let fall

off his shoulders to the ground, but which I

have collected, which I have folded, I have kept

in a drawer, and I've taken out. every day to

hold against my heart, to kiss and to bury my

face in it. Metropolitan Anthony says, because

that is all I have left of my boy. It's that

robe which is the best that was brought and the

boy put it on. For us, I say this about the robe.

because it's the robe of baptism. It's the white

robe you receive. It's the robe of the Holy Spirit.

It's the robe of the life of the resurrection.

It's the robe of the kingdom of God. Again, Elder

Milianos, the great elder of Athos who died in

May 2019, reminds us that God stoops down to

his people. If you are desperate in your repentance,

or if you feel you don't have anything to repent,

think about God stooping down, because he says

man will not bow down to God. God, in his infinite

humility, bows down to him. On the night he was

betrayed, Christ set aside his garments and stooped

down to wash the feet of a man who would deny

him thrice. That's how God was with the people

of Israel. That's how he is with everyone. This

is the foolishness of the cross, of God's love.

It says in the parable, at the end, Now his older

son was in the field, and as he drew near to

the house, he heard music and dancing. So he

called to one of the servants and asked, What

these things meant? And he said to him, Your

brother has come. And because he has received

him safe and sound, your father killed the fatted

calf. But the brother was angry and would not

go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded

with him. Again, God's initiative. God's merciful

kindness is often a stumbling block to the self

-righteous. I know that. And this is the issue

that prompts Jesus in the first place to even

tell the story. He's responding to the complaints

by the Pharisees and the scribes that his association

with obvious sinners like prostitutes, tax collectors,

is defiling him. The story is not directed to

prodigals, but to the second son. He has an even

worse and more pervasive problem. Self -righteousness

has no limits, no bounds. It hides itself in

the morally corrupt person just as easily in

the morally upright. And this is one reason why

we hear this before Lent, because it's very easy

to be self -righteous during Lent. You will fail

with the fasting and the services, that's guaranteed.

But if you think that you're keeping track, you're

in some danger. This self -righteousness is an

equal opportunity evil. We might struggle with

it all the time. We're maybe no longer in the

emergency room of the church hospital, but we

are still outpatients. We still need the medical

care. My remission, my salvation. My transfiguration,

transformation, my growth is absolutely dependent

upon Christ and how I approach him in my spiritual

program and in confession. I like the way the

parable ends without an ending. We really don't

know how it ends. Neither son is really out of

the woods by any means. It's a lot like us. To

our Lord be glory, now and ever, to ages of ages.

Amen.