Phase One, Week Six, Exercise One: A Sinner Loved By God

This exercise should be experienced between December 11 and 14.

Last week we concluded our contemplation of the reality of personal and collective sin and disorder. This week we will devote one exercise to the wonder and healing of the forgiving love that God gives and that God is.

We will be contemplating that surprising and joyful parable of the Prodigal Father (usually called the Prodigal Son). I am borrowing the title "Prodigal Father" from a Jesuit friend of mine named Henry Haske. Henry has a knack for reminding us just how bountiful God's love is. In using the title "Prodigal Father" he is reminding us that our heavenly Father gives without ceasing.

If you find that you have a desire for more prayer this week, then consider praying with Isaiah 40:1-11 (the first reading for the Second Sunday of Advent).

The second exercise this week I will title The Call of the Eternal Coach/Teacher/Leader. I will give more details about this in a few days.

The grace of Exercise One that I seek: Paraphrasing the words of Fr. Skehan, I ask for the gift of experiencing myself as a loved sinner and to purify my mind so well that I may experience a growing desire for conversion, a new insight into the tactics of God's enemy, and a renewed enthusiasm to follow God.

In the parable of the Prodigal Father, the younger son demands his share of
his inheritance. He squanders his share and ends up feeding pigs which symbolizes apostasy--that he has totally rejected his Jewish faith. At the time, the Jewish refusal to eat or deal with pigs was not just a dietary law. It was an important religious boundary. It helps to remember that just 200 years earlier, Jewish martyrs were willing to be killed rather than eat the pig's flesh that the Seleucid Hellenists (the Greeks from Syria) tried to force them to eat. Jesus' audience would have remembered the sacrifices of these Jewish heroes and would have been disgusted by the son's sleeping with prostitutes and rejection of the Torah.

It is in this context that the Father's actions reveal that God's love is unconditional. In the words of Fr. Skehan, "how can we doubt the reality of God's love for the sinner, the God who looks to the horizon day and night longing for the sight of his beloved son returning home?" (44)


Now, use your imagination to enter into Luke 15: 11-32. Can you feel the Father's joy when he sees his son returning? Can you feel the acceptance and joyful surrender when you feel the Father embrace you?