Sunday 24 C (2022)

In the face of death,

we respond with Christian hope, expressed though prayer.

So, we commend Queen Elizabeth into God’s loving arms,

praying that the choirs of angels speed her to paradise,

and we thank God for the grace manifest in her life of service.

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Turning to the gospel, that was the whole of Luke’s Chapter 15:

and, it is pretty clear that Luke expected it to be read as whole.

Its three parables, taken together, teach that

God rejoices when what was lost is found.

When we respond to the promptings of God’s Holy Spirit

calling us to repentance and conversion,

and, thereby, allow our relationship with God to be restored,

God rejoices.

The final scene of the chapter

deals with the mean-spirited elder brother.

Despite having been there all along, he is lost.

He shares in neither his father’s compassion, nor his father’s joy.

The religiously observant listeners

probably felt uncomfortable, or angry,

as they realise that they are cast as the elder brother.

However, as we listen to Jesus today

that cannot be the main point of this scene.

Surely its main point is the father came out to plead with him.

The elder brother is being sought out,

like the lost sheep and the lost coin.

Deep in our hearts, God gently pleads with us, calling us to repentance.

Ironically,

the words of complaint, voiced by the Pharisees and the scribes,

this man welcomes sinners and eats with them,

are prophetic, prophetic of the banquet of heaven,

and prophetic of its precursor here on earth, the Mass.

For God’s rejoicing is not solitary:

all those touched by God’s compassion share in it.

As we gather around the Lord’s table today,

mindful of God’s abundant compassion and forgiveness towards us,

let us share actively in the rejoicing in heaven.