{"id":2446,"date":"2018-03-03T09:00:55","date_gmt":"2018-03-03T14:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=2446"},"modified":"2018-03-03T09:04:16","modified_gmt":"2018-03-03T14:04:16","slug":"freedom-and-the-prodigal-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/freedom-and-the-prodigal-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom and The Prodigal Son"},"content":{"rendered":"

The gospel reading for Mass this morning (3\/3\/18 \u2013 Saturday of the Second Week of Lent<\/a>) is the story of the prodigal son from Luke\u2019s Gospel.\u00a0 There are three people in this story, all with the freedom to choose how they live their life.<\/p>\n

First is the younger son.\u00a0 He chooses<\/em> to take his share of his father\u2019s estate and to go off and live a life of dissipation.\u00a0 He is free to make this choice.\u00a0 At first, he enjoys life, doing whatever he wants but he quickly goes through all his money.\u00a0 He ends up working taking care of swine (pigs) and finds himself wishing he ate as good as the pigs.\u00a0 He then chooses to go back to his father, not to ask for forgiveness \u2013 he would have no right to expect that.\u00a0 He only seeks to become one of his workers who he knows are better off than he.<\/p>\n

There is also the older son.\u00a0 He has always chosen in his freedom to obey his father.\u00a0 Yet, I ask what he based his choice on.\u00a0 Did he choose to obey his father to enjoy his father\u2019s wealth?\u00a0 Did he do it out of a sense of obligation?\u00a0 Or did he really freely choose<\/em> to obey his father?\u00a0 When his younger brother returns, he is angry that the father has welcomed his brother back. He refuses to enter his father\u2019s house because he holds a grudge against his brother.<\/p>\n

Then there is the father.\u00a0 He freely chose<\/em> to give his younger son his share of the estate when he asked.\u00a0 When this son returns he freely chose<\/em> to forgive him and welcome him back.\u00a0 He was under no obligation or expectation to welcome him back.\u00a0 In fact, social expectations of the time said the son had no right to come back.\u00a0 The father didn\u2019t care.\u00a0 He chose to forgive.\u00a0 He chose to love<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Each of us has the freedom to choose.\u00a0 Do we choose to live in an immoral and unfaithful way, divorcing ourselves from God like the younger son at the beginning of the story?\u00a0 Do we choose to be like the older son, following out of obedience?\u00a0 Or do we choose to be like the father, loving and forgiving?<\/p>\n

Peace,<\/p>\n

Fr. Jeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The gospel reading for Mass this morning (3\/3\/18 \u2013 Saturday of the Second Week of Lent) is the story of the prodigal son from Luke\u2019s Gospel.\u00a0 There are three people in this story, all with the freedom to choose how they live their life. First is the younger son.\u00a0 He chooses to take his share …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Freedom and The Prodigal Son’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[82],"tags":[70,414,165],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-Ds","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2447,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions\/2447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}