More than anything else the Parable of the Prodigal Son reveals God’s love for us. We can all, to some extent, have a wrong understanding of God. We can think of him as harsh, demanding, judgmental or condemnatory. But in today’s parable Jesus reveals the fatherly heart of God. The parable is, in fact, less about the wastrel son and more about the loving father. It is the father who is the hero of the piece and he represents God our heavenly Father.
In the Christian life we can easily become preoccupied with many things: the liturgy, our prayer, our acts of charity, the politics in our parish, this or that or the other. However, what is more important in the Christian life than anything else is to know that God loves us. Without this knowledge we quickly lose our way. We quickly become harsh, demanding, judgmental and condemnatory towards others. The fundamental message of the gospel is the truth that ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life‘ Jesus came, then, not to make God’s love possible but rather to make it visible. God loves us not because of who we are but because of who he is. It is love that will win souls for Christ; it is love that witnesses to the amazing truth that God wants everyone to be saved and come to know his abundant life.