Paul’s word of grateful prayer is what we can imagine dominated the heart of that son welcomed back into the merciful arms of a father full of compassion and free from all forms of resentment: “I thank him who made me strong”. The parable that the Lord tells to convert the hearts of the Pharisees who, instead of understanding and accompanying the journey of those “tax collectors and sinners” who came to “listen to him”, “murmured” reveals to us that the secret of conversion is not the first step of we towards God, but rather God’s first step towards each one of us: “he ran to meet him”. The text of the Exodus confronts us with all the drama that inhabits the heart of God: he is certainly not insensitive to injustice and iniquity, yet he loves that his friends – like Abraham and Moses – remind him of how much greater and greater more powerful is his mercy. Moses is for us the figure of Christ who always intercedes on our behalf and is the double figure of that “eldest son” who nestles, with all his longing for worldly justice, in our unconsciously always wounded heart and in need of being sought and healed. A poem by Charel Peguy retraces the Lucanian parables that this Sunday’s Liturgy makes us listen to again, not without a renewed emotion, and re-reads them as a miracle: the greatest miracle of any imaginable and desirable miracle of a God who always begins first. to open the door of love, mercy and welcome. At the heart of our faith founded on the paschal mystery of Christ there is a revolution that has not yet been received and which perhaps is never fully recognizable.

Commentary by b. Michael David, osb Novalesa Abbey

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey