Calling All Prodigals

The Prodigal Son @ Christ Cathedral CA

The Prodigal Son

Lately the story of the Prodigal Son has been on my mind because several news songs about it have been playing on the Christian radio station I like to listen to. [Luke 15:11-32]  In the story the youngest son demands his inheritance money from his father before his father has passed away.  Then he leaves his home and wastes all of the money on women, drinking, and all kinds of "debauchery," as the Bible says.  After some time the money runs out and  he has no food so he gets a job working for a pig farmer, but he isn't paid very well and even the food he is feeding the pigs looks appetizing.  So, in an effort to avoid starving, he decides to return to his home and work for his father as a servant.  His father, upon seeing him arriving, runs to him, greets him and throws a big party for him.  His father is not mad at him at all for wasting all the money.

The King of Mercy

I believe we are currently living in the age of the Prodigal.  Right now God is looking out the window just waiting to catch a glimpse of us on the road leading back to Him so he can run to us, greet us and throw us a big welcome home party!  I have come to this conclusion primarily from the writings of Saint Faustina and from Anne with Direction for our Times.  Both of these woman wrote down messages from Jesus with the central message of: Jesus is the King of Mercy.  His mercy is for everyone, He loves everyone, and He desires our trust in Him.

God's mercy is available in our current time more abundantly than ever before because we are nearing the final battle between good and evil, and the Lord desires to win as many souls as possible before He returns as The Just Judge.  This time of mercy may last only a short while, or thousands of years, we don't really know, what we do know is that God's mercy is available to us but we must ask for it and be willing to receive it.

What You Should Know About Heaven & Hell

In order to desire to receive God's mercy we must understand what the stakes are.  The battle I mentioned above between good and evil is a real battle going on throughout the entire world right now.  God is actively sending the angles, his graces, and mercy to anyone who is willing to receive them.  These will give them courage, strength and faith to choose the side of good and help with the work of Heaven, which is striving to bring other people into the fold.  

The devil is actively working to deceive people into believing that God and even himself do not exist so we will be lulled into an apathetic state where we do not care about anything spiritual or in some cases anything at all.  Or to shift people's attention away from God and onto material things and worries so they will not have time for God.  I think he tricks people into doing nothing at all more often than doing evil things.

Your job is to make a choice about which side to follow.  This is the most important choice of your life.  Your choice is eternal and can never be undone once your time on Earth is complete, so choose wisely.   

False Beliefs 

1. Sometimes I hear people say jokingly after they have said or done something they know instinctively to be wrong, "I'm probably going to Hell."  People always say this in a joking tone, but I wonder sometimes if they believe it's true.  It's kind of like they're saying, "I don't think I'm good enough to get into Heaven, Heaven is for good people and I'm clearly not good, so I'll settle for Hell."
2. Additionally there are those that believe no one goes to Hell and it doesn't actually exist but was invented by the Church as a scare tactic in order to control people.  
3. Others believe they must earn their way into Heaven by doing good works, if they don't do enough good works God sends them Hell.  

The Truth

None of the previous three beliefs are the truth and believing any one of them can cause you a lot of problems in your life.  I personally used to believe the third falsehood.  The truth about Heaven & Hell is this:

1. God never sends a soul to Hell, however a person may choose to go to Hell with their own free will.
2. Hell does exist, there are many Bible verses that reference it.  It was originally meant for Satan aka Lucifer and Angel who rejected God and all of the other Angles who rejected God as well and are now known as Demons. There are also many visionaries who have seen Hell and or Demons.  It's not a scare tactic it's simply the truth.
3. No person can ever earn their way into Heaven.  In the Old Testament of the Bible we are presented with the stories of many people, almost all of them have a very similar story; they are ordinary or particularly lowly people who God raises up to be great.  Despite this favor from God, they always end up sinning in some way and disappointing God. This tells us that no matter how hard we try or even how much favor from God we receive we will always fall short.  So God decided to get the job done Himself, He came down from Heaven as Jesus showed us how to live then took all of the punishment from our shortcomings and sins upon Himself and died on the cross so that we would not have to earn our way into Heaven.  Jesus opened the gates of Heaven and said come on in, He did the work part for us.

The Practical Reality   

What does all of this mean for all of us Prodigal sons and daughters who are living in the world today, with no thoughts about God, or avoiding God because we consider Him too demanding, or too strict, or too far away to care about us. 

You Have Been Given a Choice

If I asked you right now, "Do you want to go to Heaven?" What would you say?  I hope that most people would say "Yes."  Even the most lost soul finds it difficult to understand why anyone would willing choose eternal pain and punishment over eternal joy and freedom.  So if you said, "Yes, I want to go to Heaven," then I would say, "Prove it."  The reality is Jesus is asking each one of us a question, "Do you want to be with me or not?"  Heaven is being with Jesus, and all the perks that come along with living with the Creator of the Universe, and Hell is being without Jesus, and all of the torments that come along with being separated from Jesus and living with the Father of Lies. 

While it is true that we can say yes, with words, do our lives match that yes?  Consider a man who tells his wife, yes I love you, then stays out late into the night every night, and does everything he can to avoid seeing his wife.  Would you say this man actually loves his wife or not?  This is the same with God, if a man says, yes I want to go to Heaven, then does all he can do avoid God, by hanging out all night with his friends, and never even talking with God, does he actually want to go to Heaven?  It seems to me he enjoys being without God more than being with God, and so at the end of his life, Jesus will ask him, "Do you choose Heaven or Hell?" His whole life will be presented before him, and he will be given a big pie chart showing how much time he spent with God and how much time he spent avoiding God.  Whichever slice is bigger determines whether he said yes or no with his life, because his actions spoke louder than his words.  So despite it being unlikely that there is an actual pie chart, the idea is still the same, in order to prove that you want to go to Heaven, you must prove it with your life, aka time, talent, treasures, rather than words alone.

What Does my Yes Look Like?

So now that it's been established you have to choose Heaven and you have to prove you choose it based on the way you live what does that look like on a daily basis?

Jesus has given us all kinds of guidelines and advice about how to live.  We have the 10 commandments, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, the beatitudes.  All of these are great ways to practice proving your yes, but let us remember, we have already established you can not earn your way into Heaven.  It can be a great temptation to run off and start saying 5 rosaries a day, signing up for the soup kitchen, dog shelter, and local senior center bingo night, but are you getting caught up in performing actions in order to earn your way into Heaven?  All while you are running yourself ragged? 

Jesus said, "I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full." He also said, "I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you."

The best way to prove you want to go to Heaven is to live your life to the full and love God and all the people in your life.  This will look different for every individual but here are some guidelines:

1. Spend some time talking to God and listening to God aka praying.  Make sure to make this part of your daily schedule, make it a priority.  Then if God wants you to volunteer at the local soup kitchen or to say a rosary or two, He will let you know, by filling your heart with that desire. When this happens you will be doing the work God designed for you specifically, this will bring you joy.  It will also be done with a genuine desire to to be obedient to God's will because you know Him and have a relationship with Him rather than in an attempt to impress Him and try to earn your way into Heaven.
2. Trust God with everything.  In regards to how you see yourself in comparison to God, try to see yourself as a little child who must receive everything from God.  Trust that He will provide you with everything that is good for you and, if you allow Him, will take away all that is harmful to you.
3. Do you duty and do it for God.  Often when we are at work or at home the people around us do not recognize our efforts and we can become lax or cut corners because no one really notices anyway.  Remember God sees all you do, so don't work for the praise of others, do your best knowing that God sees your efforts and will reward you for ever smile offered to a stranger, and every mundane task done for Him.
4. Love all the people God has placed in your life especially the most annoying person you know!  Loving someone does not mean agreeing with everything they say, it means putting their needs above your own.  This is how we put love into action: When someone asks you to grab them a soda and you just got back from the break room, put their need for a soda above your need to finish that report.  When your child wont stop crying, put their need for comfort, encouragement, and attention, above your need for some peace and quite and a clean house. 
5. Lastly if you are a Catholic be obedient to all of the teachings of the Church.  Obedience to the Church is like a support you can rest against when sin an temptation come along.  If you find a particular teaching of the Church to be difficult to be obedient to then I encourage you to research that issue, and find out just where the teaching came from and why the Church teaches it.  This kind of questioning will increase your faith because the truth does not falter under the most severe questioning, it will stand firm.  

If you can start practicing these five things on a daily basis, God will be able to work in your life in a more significant way because you will be saying Yes to him with your life.  He can then revel to you His specific will and plan for you.

But You Don't Understand I'm a really Bad Person!

If you still think there is no hope for you, because up to this point in your life you've been saying "No, you do not want to go to Heaven" with your life never fear!

Jesus is the King of Mercy and as the King of Mercy he said to Saint Faustina, "The greater the sinner the greater right he has to my Mercy."  

Jesus died for you.  If you were the only person in the world, he still would have died for you.  It doesn't matter what you've done you can be made new.

In the past I was addicted to a particular sin.  I felt like a slave to this addiction and it seemed impossible to get free.  The only way this sin was overcome was when I admitted to God that I was unable to free myself from this sin, then allowed Him to free me from it.  God did not disappoint, and I was free from that addiction nearly instantly.  I am not free of all temptation to fall into that sin again, but God's grace has protected me from falling back into it.  All you must do is allow God to work in you.  He will take care of, but you have to give Him the time to do the work, by being open to Him.

If you're a Catholic go to sacrament of Confession, Jesus gives us great graces to overcome sin in this Sacrament and washes us clean of the sins we have already committed.

Remember while we still breath it's never too late and no sin is too big, all Prodigals can return to God our Father's open arms.  He is waiting for you today!  Shake off that apathy and doubt and be free in the Father's love!

Welcome All the Fish

[Matt 13:47-50] ⁴⁷ 'Again, the kingdom of Heaven is like a dragnet that is cast in the sea and brings in a haul of all kinds of fish. ⁴⁸ When it is full, the fishermen bring it ashore; then, sitting down, they collect the good ones in baskets and throw away those that are no use. ⁴⁹ This is how it will be at the end of time: the angels will appear and separate the wicked from the upright, ⁵⁰ to throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.

The other day at Mass the Priest read the Gospel reading above.  Being quite the fish fanatic I was surprised I did not remember this comparison of the Kingdom of Heaven.  I remembered the one about the mustard seed, and the one about the field sown with weeds by the enemy, but this one about the Kingdom of Heaven being like a net I had forgotten. 

Fr. explained that the net caught all kinds of fish, big fish small fish, old and young, and the net is the Church.  He pointed out that it is not until "the end of time" that the fish will be separated, until then all the fish are to remain together in the net.  We are not the fishermen, we are the fish.  The fishermen are the Angels.  With this in mind our job is not to separate the good from the bad, in fact as one of the fish there is no way for us to know the good from the bad, so our job is to welcome all the fish so that God may transform the bad into good.  Everyone has until "the end of time" or the end of their time, whichever comes first, to be transformed. Fr. ended by pointing out we are not the quality control we should accept all. 

Well I found this all to be quite lovely and I wrote it down so I could remember it later and went on into my day.  It just so happens that I work in quality assurance at my office.  As such I suppose I have developed quite an intolerance for low quality or even low morality.  At lunch time I happened to overhear a conversion about just such low morality and I became quite angry.  I was so angry that later when I saw the person who had made these comments, I responded very sharply to their question and brushed by them as quick as possible not looking at them, because I did not want to associate with such a person.

It wasn't until later when I realized that Jesus would not have treated this person that way.  This person clearly has some brokenness in their soul and perhaps was making such offensive comments in public as a cry for help.  I was not welcoming toward this person, all I saw was a bad fish.  I was putting myself in the place of the fishermen rather than the fish.  As one of the fish it's my job to encourage the rest of the fish.  Everyone of them is scarred, we are in a net and we don't know where we are going or what is going to happen to us.  In fact the reading itself is quite frighting emphasizing the fact that the wicked will be thrown into the furnace.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to end up in the furnace and I don't want anyone else to end up there either.  So it's my job to try and help those other fish, even if they act bad, that doesn't mean they are bad.  In fact I may be the one who needs their help so pushing them away is not going to help me or them.  

I am sad that I can not go back in time and do this moment over, now that I have clarity about the matter.  However, I can pray that I remember I'm am only one of the fish, and next time a situation such as this occurs, I hope I can show love and mercy just as the King of Mercy would.  Please pray for me dear fishes, and pray for all, that we may all be transformed into upright fish by the the end of our time. Amen.

Why Did Jesus Run Away?

The Finding of Jesus in the Temple

One day while I was out my rosary walk I happened to be saying the Joyful mysteries.  The 5th Joyful mystery is the Finding of Jesus in the Temple.  Aside from Jesus' birth, presentation, and much traveling, this is the only story the Bible gives us about Jesus' childhood.  I wondered, as I often did, about this mystery.  For a long time it troubled me that Jesus ran away from his parents and when they asked him about it his response sounded almost snide to me. [Luke 2:49] "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"

Previously, I tended to feel a little bitter over this particular mystery, thinking that surly Jesus knew what he was doing and why would he cause such heartache for his parents?  It took them three whole days to find him.  They had no cell phones, no vehicles to travel back to the city quickly, how would they every find their son?  They must have been frantic, especially knowing how even as a baby people wanted to kill him.  When they finally do find him, they find him clam and sitting with the Temple teachers.  [Luke 2:48] ".... His mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." 

On this particular day I considered that Jesus never sinned, so running away from his parents at the age of 12 was not a sin.  Likewise, his parent's failure to realize that he wasn't with the group for an entire day, was also not a sin, because we know that Mary never sinned.  This was an important realization for me because in enabled me to ask that if this event was not a sin then what was it?  What was the purpose?  

The Purpose

As I was praying the rosary, the Lord helped me to understand the significance of this story.  Jesus never does anything without a purpose and this childhood tale is no exception.  It took Mary and Joseph 3 days to find him.  3 days he was lost from them, this points to the cross, 3 days he was lost to whole world as he lay in the tomb.  So this was a preparation for Mary, likely to help her cope later in life, she had lost him for 3 days before and she would again, but in the end all would be made well again.  

So while this event had personal significance for Mary it also has a very important significance for us today.  First of all sometimes Jesus will hide from us.  He doesn't do this to be cruel, he knows that this will benefit us in someway.  He knows were we are and he is calm as he waits for us.

Secondly, Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the Temple.  He showed us where he waits for us and where his presence may be revealed.  He is in the temple, his temple, the Church!  I am referring to the Eucharist.  Jesus is physically present in the Tabernacle in every Catholic Church, body, blood, soul, and divinity!  When we feel as though we have lost the Lord, or that he is far away, all we need to do is go to the Church to be with him.  There are many lessons within the Finding of the Child Jesus story, but I believe the main lesson is to help us know where to find Jesus today.  It is also worth mentioning that Mary and Joseph were able to find him, so if you go to the Church and you still can't find Jesus there, ask Mary and Joseph to help, they can help you find him!