PASS IT ON #62

The Prodigal Father

by a Madonna House Staff Worker

Father, I have been our prodigal son, for I have taken the riches you have showered on me into a far country and have squandered them in riotous living. I have used your gifts of nature and even of grace in a kingdom apart from yours, using them not under your will and for your purposes but taking them into my own control, for my own purposes, for vanity, for arrogance, for domination, for admiration, for ambition, squandering and dissipating them in disorderly self-centeredness. And when I had wasted them I found my spirit starving; for there was neither nourishment, nor vitality, nor healing for the soul in those tusks for swine. And I came to my senses and turned back to you.

Father, you saw me coming from a long way off, and moved with compassion you came to meet me. You clothed me with the finest robe and made a feast for my return to life. Father, Jesus is my coming to my senses. Jesus is my Way back to your house. Jesus is your Compassion and he is your Coming to meet me while I was still a long way off. He is the Festal Garment you clothe me with, my garment of salvation, my Robe of glory, the Robe of sonship you yourself put on me. Jesus is the Feast you prepare to celebrate my return to life and to you. Let my soul remember that each time I receive his Body, that here is my perpetual way back to you, here is your compassion and coming to meet me, here is the glory of the sons of God which you constantly clothe me with, here is the everlasting feast of your joy at my return to life.

Father, you have admitted me to the mystery of your heart. You have let me see and taste your compassion. Do not let me ever become the elder brother. He served you, but only for his own purposes, for payment. He loved your rewards, but he did not love you. He worked for wages and not for love. He was always a hired man, never a son.

Let me always be your son, my Father. As one who has known mercy, let me always love your mercy, seek your mercy. Let me never want payment for serving you, recognition, affection, admiration, status. Cleanse from my heart the hireling who is discontented and too embarrassed to need mercy, who wants some day to be free of mercy, to be able to receive justice and reward from you. Let me love mercy. Let me rejoice that I will have always and only your mercy, that it is mercy which fills the universe and guides its process, not justice. Let me love and rejoice in mercy wherever it appears: your mercy to my brothers, their mercy to me, my mercy to them.

Let the eyes of my soul be always turned toward you like a son to his father. Let my heart be attuned to your heart. Let my will move with your will. Let me see that when you frustrate my self-will and my self-gratification you are not being harsh and rejecting but merciful, and are freeing me to be merciful. Let me trust without reservation that in emptying me of myself you are filling me with your mercy, yourself. Let my spirit cling firmly to this: that more real than all the pain and suffering, more full of vitality than all the shame and guilt, stronger than all the cruelty, sin and evil, is mercy; and that to all you are always Father.

— Adapted from Coming Home