“The tragedy of our times is that many of us do not seek this gift of reconciliation with God in Christ Jesus as we should.”
Holy Mother Church exhorts us to rejoice on Laetare Sunday of the Lenten Season with these words, “Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her. Be joyful, all who were in mourning; exult and be satisfied at her consoling breasts.”(Is 66:10-11)
But how can we pause to rejoice when we are recalling our many sins, performing our Lenten penances for these sins, reflecting on the suffering of Christ for our sins, and striving to unite our sufferings with His suffering? Doesn’t it seem out of place to rejoice in such a setting?
In truth, the Church calls us to pause and rejoice in this Sunday of the Lenten season to remind us that we are about to experience the greatest joy of all – the joy of full reconciliation with God in Jesus Christ at Easter. We can rejoice in the face of our struggle with sins and sufferings because these painful realities are not the final word. We are joyful because we are on a journey to complete reconciliation with God as His beloved sons and daughters.
This is the message that Jesus teaches in the parable of the Prodigal Son in LK 15:11-32. The younger son seeks his joy in property and possessions to the point that he cannot wait for his father to die, “Father, give me a share of your estate that should come to me.” He also seeks joy in being distant and independent from his father by moving to a distant country where his father would not have any influence on him. He seeks joy in unhindered freedom, bad friendships, and a party spirit, “He squandered all his inheritance in a life of dissipation.” He ended up losing everything as well as his dignity as he found himself hopelessly coveting the meal of pigs.
He found true joy only by returning to the father and receiving complete reconciliation with his father who reconciles with him as a beloved son and not as a hungry servant. The father does not think of treating him as anything other than a beloved son no matter how undeserving he is. The father also gives him all that he needs to live as his son, “Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.” This is the complete reconciliation that brings him true joy.
On the other hand, the older son seeks his own joy in his dutiful and faithful service towards the father, “Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.” You can just sense the anger, resentment, and frustration that is seething in the heart of this supposedly loyal son. He is so quick to accuse his father of partiality and condemn his brother for associating with prostitutes. He just cannot relate to his father’s joy as long as he seeks joy in things other than a thriving relationship with his father and brother.
The father reminds him that, though he owns all the father’s property, his first and greatest joy must be in the reconciliation of his younger brother with the family, “But now we must celebrate and rejoice because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”
My dear brothers and sisters, our God is a God of joy who longs to communicate His joy to us. This is the only joy that satisfies us completely and gives us strength for fidelity to Him as His children, “Rejoicing in the Lord always must be your strength.”(Neh 8:10) We enter into this joy only by being completely reconciled with Him as His beloved sons and daughters and by living as such by the graces which He gives to us through our reconciliation with Him. This is what Jesus meant when He said, “There is so much joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”(Lk 15:10) The joy of heaven echoes in our hearts when we take any step deeper in our relationship with God. Nothing compares to this joy.
We cannot merit or earn this reconciliation with God. Christ Jesus merited it for us by His passion, death, and resurrection, “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” It is in Jesus that we have access to this gift of complete reconciliation with God and participation in God’s own righteousness, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who did not know sin so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”(2Cor 5:19,21)
The tragedy of our times is that many of us do not seek this gift of reconciliation with God in Christ Jesus as we should. Like the prodigal son, many of us still seek our complete joy more in human relationships, possessions, pleasures, comforts, successes, independence from God, etc. Like the older son, many also seek joy in their fidelity to rules and duties without being grounded in the unconditional love of God for them. They see themselves as dutiful servants, futilely laboring to win a love that is already a gift from God Himself in His son, Jesus Christ.
This is why we must seek for this complete reconciliation with God as His beloved children which Jesus offers us in the sacrament of Reconciliation. In this sacrament, our sins are washed away by the blood of Jesus, we are reinstated as God’s beloved children, we receive all the graces that we need to live as His children in our world today, and we experience that supreme joy of complete reconciliation with God and the amazing hope that accompanies it.
Unfortunately, many people avoid this sacrament because they do not see it as a gift that Jesus has won for us by His paschal mystery. They do not see it as a means of complete reconciliation with God and the Church, the mystical body of Christ. They lack the humble faith to see Jesus waiting to embrace and reconcile them with Himself through the ministry of a sinful human priest in the confessional. They focus more on their hurt egos from their moral failures than on the price that Jesus paid for us to be completely reconciled with God. Thus, they fail to receive the specific graces to rise from their moral failures and continue the journey of deeper reconciliation with God.
In this life, we can never be perfectly reconciled with God because there are always things in our lives that hinder us from loving God as perfectly as He loves us. We need to have this ongoing and ever more thorough reconciliation with Him as His children until we attain heavenly communion with Him.
This is why we must make use of this sacrament of reconciliation frequently so that we can continuously go deeper in our reconciliation with God and thus enjoy the joy of the Lord even amidst our struggles with sin and suffering.
This is the potent message of Laetare Sunday in the Lenten Season.
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!
2Cor 5:17-21; Lk 15:1-3, 11-32
Image credit: “Return of the Prodigal Son” (detail) by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo | Restored Traditions
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About the author:
Fr. Nnamdi Moneme, OMV, is a Roman Catholic priest and religious of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary currently serving in the Philippines. He teaches theology and is a seminary formator for candidates to the priesthood and religious life. Father also gives Ignatian retreats and serves as spiritual director to many of the lay, religious, and clergy in the area.
He earned his first degree in Physics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. Ordained in 2009, he studied at St. John’s seminary, in Brighton, Massachusetts. Father has an STL/MA in Moral Theology from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines.
Father Moneme blogs at https://toquenchhisthirst.wordpress.com/.
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