27 February 2027 · Latin Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malankara Rite · Syro-Malabar Rite · മലയാളം
“So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” Luke 15:20
The prophet Micah ends his book with a prayer and a song of wonder. He asks God to shepherd his people “as in the days of old,” and then breaks out: “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency.” God does not merely tolerate forgiving; he delights in it. “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” Sins thrown into the deepest sea are not fished out again. The Psalm adds its own picture: “as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.” And it gives us today's refrain: the LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Then Jesus tells the parable that has brought more sinners home than perhaps any other page of Scripture. The Pharisees and scribes grumble: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he tells of a father with two sons. The younger demands his inheritance, as if his father were already dead, and wastes it in a distant country. When famine comes he feeds pigs and longs for their pods. Then “he came to himself” and says: “I will get up and go to my father.” He rehearses a speech, but the father does not let him finish. “While he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” Robe, ring, sandals, the fatted calf: the son is restored, not as a hired hand but as a son. Then the elder son, who never left home, refuses to come in. The father goes out to him too: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” The story ends with the question hanging in the air: will he come in? Both sons are lost; both are loved. Today we also remember St Gregory of Narek, the tenth-century Armenian monk and Doctor of the Church, whose Book of Lamentations is a long prayer “speaking with God from the depths of the heart,” the prayer of a sinner who trusts the Father's mercy more than his own sin.
Theme: “While he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion.”
The God who delights in mercy, the son who came home, and the son who must still come in.
“He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” Micah 7:19
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Luke 6:36
Apply: Throw one old sin you keep fishing out back into the sea: believe it is forgiven, and stop accusing yourself.
“as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.” Psalm 103:12
“So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” Luke 15:20
Apply: Go to confession before the Third Sunday of Lent if you can.
“The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Psalm 103:8
“And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”” Luke 15:2
Apply: Welcome back one person who has returned to the Church or to your family, and rejoice with them.
God delights to forgive, and runs to meet us.
Both sons are invited to the feast; the door is open.
Take-home resolution: Make a good confession this Lent, and forgive as you have been forgiven.
Dear friends, Micah asks in wonder: who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency (Micah 7:18). God does not forgive reluctantly. He delights in it. He casts our sins into the depths of the sea.
Jesus shows us this God in a story. A younger son takes his inheritance and wastes it. When he has nothing left, he comes to himself and says: I will get up and go to my father. He prepares a speech.
But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him (Luke 15:20). The father does not wait. He runs. He does not let the son finish his speech. He gives him a robe, a ring and sandals: you are still my son.
And the elder son, who stayed at home, refuses to come in. The father goes out to him too: son, you are always with me. Today, whether we are the younger son or the elder, the Father is coming out to meet us. St Gregory of Narek prayed: my sins are many, but your mercy is greater (in substance). Let us go home. Amen.
Children, Jesus told about a boy who ran away and did wrong things. When he came home, his father ran to him and hugged him and had a party! God is like that father. When we say sorry, he runs to hug us.
Father of mercies, you run to meet us while we are still far off. Bring us home from every distant country, cast our sins into the depths of the sea, and free us from the resentment of the elder son. Through the prayers of St Gregory of Narek, teach us to speak with you from the depths of our hearts. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Micah ends his book with a wonder: “Who is a God like you?” The Gospel gives the answer in a story: this is a God like a father who runs. Both readings speak of sins thrown away and of a joy that no one could have earned. Psalm 103 says the same, today’s Lenten song of mercy. With the Sacrament of Reconciliation in view, these may be the two most encouraging readings of Lent. The key words are mercy, return and celebrate.
Setting.
Micah came from Moresheth, a village in the Judean foothills, and preached in the late eighth century BC, in the time of Isaiah. He is the prophet of the small farmer who is being squeezed by the powerful, and the prophet of “what does the Lord require of you” (6:8).
The final verses of the book form a kind of liturgy of prayer and praise. Many scholars think this closing section took its final shape later, when the people had come through disaster and were looking back in hope. The people first ask God to shepherd them. Then they sing.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, which lives alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land;” (7:14)
A note on the text. The Hebrew word karmel means “garden land” and is also the name of Mount Carmel. The NRSV takes it the first way, and the POC the second (കാർമലിലെ). Either way the flock is small and alone, and looks with longing to the rich pasture of Bashan and Gilead.
“As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt, show us marvelous things.” (7:15)
A note on the text. The Hebrew reads “I will show him”, with God promising. The POC keeps this first person. The NRSV, noting that the Hebrew is difficult, adjusts the verse so that the people’s prayer continues. Both lead to the same point: God’s future will be like the Exodus.
“He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency.” (7:18)
Anger is real in the Bible and it is passing. Mercy is what God delights in.
“You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” (7:19)
Just as Pharaoh’s chariots “went down into the depths like a stone” (Exodus 15:5). In the Bible the sea is the place no one comes back from. The sins will not be fetched up again. Jewish custom has honored this verse: at the New Year (Rosh Hashanah), many Jews go to a stream or river and pray these verses, in the rite called Tashlikh, “you will cast”.
How the Church reads it.
In the Roman Missal, an old prayer (the Collect of the Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time) says that God shows his almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy. The Catechism agrees, saying that God displays his power at its height by forgiving sins (CCC 270). Micah’s question has its answer in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in which a penitent’s sins are truly taken away.
Setting.
Chapter 15 starts with a complaint. Tax collectors and sinners are drawing near to Jesus, and the Pharisees and scribes grumble: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them” (15:2). The concern of those who grumbled was to keep faith with God’s holiness, and they are not to be despised for it. Jesus answers with three parables of something lost and found: a sheep, a coin and a son. Only the third has a second son, and he stands for anyone who grumbles at mercy, then as now.
A father could divide property in his lifetime, but for a son to ask for it was like saying he wished his father dead, as many commentators point out. By the Law the firstborn received a double portion (Deuteronomy 21:17), so the younger son’s share would be about a third.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs.” (15:15)
For a Jewish hearer, this was the bottom. Pigs were unclean (Leviticus 11:7). He has lost everything that made him a son of Israel. The “pods” of v. 16 are probably carob, poor food, which the POC translates as “bran”.
“But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” (15:20)
The father saw him from far away, so he must have been watching the road. Commentators often point out that a dignified elderly man did not run in that culture. The kiss comes before the confession and before any change has been proved.
“Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’” (15:21)
He has come with a prepared speech (vv. 18–19), and he does not finish it. The part about being a hired hand is cut short. (A few ancient manuscripts add it here; the NRSV notes this.) The father is already speaking of other things.
“put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.” (15:22)
The robe, the ring and the sandals all say one thing: this is a son. Slaves commonly went barefoot, and a ring carried a family’s authority (compare Genesis 41:42).
“But when this son of yours came back,” (15:30)
“This son of yours”: he will not say “my brother”. And he said “working like a slave” of his own life at home (v. 29). He was in the house and still far off.
“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” (15:31)
As gentle as anything in the Gospel. The father went out to the elder son exactly as he ran out to the younger. He has two lost sons, and he goes out to both.
“But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” (15:32)
“This brother of yours”: the father gives the word back to him. “Had to”: heaven’s logic of joy (compare 15:7).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that this parable describes the process of conversion and repentance, “the center of which is the merciful father”, and goes through it step by step (CCC 1439). St John Paul II wrote at length on it in two documents, Dives in Misericordia 5–6 and Reconciliatio et Paenitentia 5–6. In the first, he stresses that the father’s love restores the son’s dignity. In the second, he gives time to the elder brother, in whom he sees our own selfishness and the divisions in the human family. This parable should never be read as a picture of Jews and Christians. The elder brother is any believer who stays at home and has forgotten that he is a son.
If God forgives so generously, why do I need to confess to a priest?
The younger son did say the words out loud: “Father, I have sinned.” Forgiveness cannot be earned, but it has to be received, and we receive it as people with bodies and voices. Christ gave his Church the ministry of reconciliation (John 20:23; CCC 1441–1442, 1461). In the confessional, the priest acts in the person of the Father who runs and of Christ the Good Shepherd (CCC 1465). The sacrament is above all the embrace, the robe and the ring.