Homily outline: God cares for us in all circumstances (combining all resources)

• In the prodigal son, we witness the reintegration and celebration of a wayward son:
  • A forgiving father placates a jealous and dutiful son and brother while receiving back as family another brother who has squandered his inheritance on dissolute living.
  • Often the wayward son draws the most attention in the parable, and perhaps even the jealous son does, but it is the merciful and magnanimous father who exemplifies love of biblical proportion.
  • His implicit commitment to the graciousness of God and gratefulness of the wayward son’s return radiate with more power than any latent desire to punish the prodigal son and side with the envious brother.
• Gratitude seems elemental to the forgiveness shown in the parable and scientists are studying how gratitude takes root in individual children and how it may contribute to happiness across cultures:
  • If the formation, motivation, practice, intelligibility, and value of gratitude can be measured and studied, such scientific data could support why the graciousness of God has such concrete benefits.
  • Scientific data regarding gratitude could also assist with developing techniques to assist with the learning of gratitude and the expression and reception of gratitude.

• The prodigal son is mistaken in thinking that by becoming a hired worker he will return to the good graces of his father.
  • The jealous brother is also mistaken to think that his obedience to his father and his previous hard work would render him greater than the lost prodigal son.
  • No, the work God is most interested in is the work of mercy, applying ourselves to the difficult task of forgiving and receiving as God does.
  • Only the father grasps the crucial and painstaking task to be undertaken:

• Cultivating effective gratitude requires the right kind of effort and work.
  • Modeling the graciousness of the “prodigal” father requires more than going through the motions of mercy, like “slaughtering a fattened calf.”
  • Scientists have shown that hard physical labor can contribute to dementia, heart disease, and even death.
  • Cultivating effective gratitude does involve strenuous piety that, unlike hard physical labor, is good for us physically as well as spiritually.

• Today’s second reading calls us to become ambassadors of Christ:
  • This requires divinely-inspired diplomacy resulting from the rigorous exercise of our spiritual imagination.
  • The father had to see the prodigal son not as degenerate but as a child worthy of forgiveness and renewing love.
  • Being an ambassador of Christ and modeling the otherworldly forgiveness of the “prodigal” father missions us to stay alert for calls for forgiveness and the subtleties of the world’s pain all around us.
  • The subtleties of the world’s pain has been underscored by recent studies that reveal that even plants cry out when cut or dehydrated.
  • While plants emit these distress sounds at an ultrahigh frequency, scientists have learned to tune in to their distress.
  • How will we tune ourselves to the nearly silent outcries from creation as well as more pronounced pleas for the mercy and justice from oppressed peoples around the world?
  • Today we again commit ourselves to such attunement in our mission to be ambassadors of reconciliation in Christ.