Dear Friends,
Can it really be? Laetare Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Lent? We are a whole month in and just three weeks to Easter Sunday! There’s still plenty of time to engage or re-engage in our efforts of praying, fasting, and almsgiving.
This Sunday, Mother Church offers us the parable of the Prodigal Son or as some identify it the parable of the Forgiving Father. For sure, most of us can recite this parable almost line for line. It is beautiful and powerful especially as we recognize and embrace the tremendous forgiveness and love of our Father God!
I came across this true story which makes real and concrete the depth of God’s mercy and compassion which Jesus is telling us about. What follows “…is used with permission of its author, Rev. Msgr. Joseph A. Pellegrino, Diocese of St. Petersburg, FL.”
“Frankie’s family lived in a suburb of Chicago, but he had grandparents who had a large farm in Iowa. Every summer his family would spend two weeks on the farm with grandma and grandpa. The kids loved it. They would play with the animals, go swimming and fishing. Every day was an adventure. When Frankie was 11, the summer just before his sixth grade, his grandpa asked him if he would like to work one of the tractors. “Are you kidding? Of course.” So, Grandpa taught him who to run one of the big rigs. Frankie took to it like a natural. Even Grandpa was shocked at how easily he learned it. So, he told him, “Next summer, if you want, you can come a month before your parents and help me out at the farm running a tractor.”
…That whole school year, he [Frankie] was looking forward to going to Iowa. When the summer came, with just a day or two of training by Grandpa, Frankie was there, a little guy on a big rig. Now Grandpa told Frankie that he could only run the tractor in the morning. After lunch, Grandpa wanted him to play with the other children from the local farms. So that was his summer, working the tractor in the morning, swimming, fishing and just having fun with the other kids in the afternoon. And then the Fourth of July approached.
One of the kids had firecrackers. Grandpa saw them and told Frankie that he had to be very careful. This was a dry summer, and a little spark could set off a huge fire that would destroy all the crops. Frankie and the others could only set off the fireworks away from the fields. So, they decided to play with them near the farmhouse. Actually, right under the kitchen window. Grandma was furious. “You children need to get away from the house. You’ll destroy my baking.” So, the kids went about halfway between the farmhouse and the fields. Soon most of the fireworks were gone, except for the sparklers.
Someone got the idea that they should light sparklers and throw them. They would look just like comets. “Cool!” Frankie agreed. So, they started throwing lit sparklers. Then they decided to see who could throw one the farthest. You know what happened. One of the sparklers set the grass on fire. The children tried to stomp the flames out, but the fire quickly spread to the fields. The entire crop, acres and acres of corn, went up in flames. The firemen came, the neighboring farmers came, but the best they could do was save the farmhouse and the barn. At the end of the day, Grandpa saw all his hard work destroyed.
Exhausted, covered in soot and sweat, he asked, “Where’s Frankie?” “Has anyone seen Frankie?” No one had. Grandma began to cry, perhaps Frankie had died in the flames. Then Grandpa said, “I think I know where he is.” So, Grandpa went down to the swimming hole. And there was Frankie, sitting on a rock, sweaty, filthy, shaking and crying. When he saw his grandfather approaching, he was convinced that he would get clobbered. Certainly, his grandfather wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. But Grandpa went up to him, put his arm around him and said, “Boy, let’s go home.” At the end of the summer, he even invited Frankie to come back the next year.
Frankie didn’t just learn a lesson about obedience; after all, none of this would have happened if he had listened to his Grandpa. More than this, Frankie learned a profound lesson about mercy and forgiveness. Frankie told this story many years later.....after he was ordained a priest. You see, he wanted others to experience the mercy and love of God as he had experienced it in his grandfather. He wanted to be a vehicle of God’s love for others. He had to become a priest.
The Forgiving Father does not want us sitting in misery on our rocks, overwhelmed with guilt and shame. No, the Forgiving Father wants to embrace us and bring us home.”
As the Father has done for us, may we consciously and repeatedly do for one another, day by day.
God bless you, God love you,
Monsignor McCulken
