The Road Back

"There was a man who had two sons."
It is one of the most recognizable opening stanzas the bible has to offer. I was once asked, "How do you keep from getting bored with the same readings year after year". My answer? "I dont; But every once in awhile, if I'm paying attention, even that most recognizable parable that I have heard a thousand times if I've heard it once offers up a jewel of discovery that makes every little tedious moment worth while."

I don't know about you but it always seemed I could gauge the strength of my relationships by a palpable sense of distance I felt from the person/s in that relationship. I can remember times when my marriage was struggling. I would lay in bed next to my wife; the same queen size bed we had shared for a decade or more; and yet as we spoke coldly to one another it seemed to me as if the sound of her voice was coming from across a ravine. The sense of distance was very real to me.
It has been the same off and on with my relationship to Christ. There have been times when I have been on fire with my faith and it seemed as if Christ, through the holy spirit resided within me. But at other times the distance between myself and my Lord seemed insurmountable. Since I know that Christ will never turn his back on me; I have always imagined each of my sinful actions as the beginning of a journey away from God. Some of those journeys were short, as I quickly repented and returned to my waiting Lord's embrace. Some of those journey's were long, years long; Each sin taking me another step away from Christ who's arms remained ever open, awaiting the return of his prodigal son. In those times I remember feeling great despair and hopelessness as I moved further and further from Christ's embrace. I feared the long path that I had taken away from the love of God would be an unbearably long journey of repentance back to Him.
It is here, that on a cold winter day, as I sat through yet another Mass, and yet another reading I had heard so many times before, that I heard something that I had never "heard" before.

"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him."

It was an innocuous line that almost seemed out of place. Why make a point of saying that the son was still a "long way off" if it held no importance to the parable? And so it must mean something.
Now I fully realize that, to many of you, the thing that I discovered that day may seem quite obvious. So much so that now you may have dismissed me as terribly ignorant. But in the end I kind of think that is the whole point. It had never occurred to me until that day, and what it said to me was something that I really needed to hear, that day. In that moment I knew there was no need to hesitate in fear of the long road of repentance that lay ahead of me, if indeed I did decide to end my sinful ways. I knew now that in the moment I turned my face back to God and chose repentance over sin; that even though I was still a long way off, the Father would come out to meet me, embrace me, and help me on the journey back.

I learned something else that day as well. This ancient book written so many years ago is not a dead text any more so than the man whose life it prophecies and celebrates is dead. This text is alive, poignant, and relevant as much today as it was all those years ago. God speaks through it directly to us, just what we need, just when we need it.