Scripture Reflections for the Fourth Sunday of Lent
Year C, Lectionary 33
We often cherish the worldly: wealth, pleasure and our egos. Like the children in the parable, we yearn after the possessions of our Father to the point of moving away from God. Yet in all situations God is coming towards us, awaiting our return back home, to the heavenly feast.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Autonomy • Belong • Blessing • Body • Child • Choice • Community • Conversion • Covenant • Creation • Deserve • Dignity • Ego • Environment • Envy • Eucharist • Exclude • Family • Famine • Father • Feast • Forgive • Gather • Generosity • Gift • Grace • Grateful • Heaven • Home • Include • Intention • Jealous • Joshua • Joy • Justice • Lent • Love • Mercy • Moses • Mother • New • Offering • Parable • Parent • Passover • Patience • Pharisee • Prodigal • Question • Reconciliation • Reflection • Relationship • Repent • Return • Separation • Sight • Sin • Son • Soul • Steward • Thankful • Understand • Welcome •
“So today taste and see the goodness of God. Experience God with the entirety of your existence...use your body to carry God's love out into the world where others can see it and touch it”
“so that, just like he becomes a sin offering for us, we might become righteous for him so that we might become the righteousness of God”
“God invites us to rejoice wherever beauty, truth, goodness and repentance reveal themselves, even in younger brothers who squander their inheritance”
“God sees you as you are. You may be all banged up from the struggle you have gone through but God truly says, 'welcome home.'”
“And these two brothers have one thing in common. And it's this: the first step is the hardest step.”
“If that person who has sinned gravely, who has made a wreck of their life, if they come to their senses and they repent of that way of life, the proper response to that is joy, compassion and rejoicing, right. That's the, that's seeing the spiritual reality through the eyes of Jesus.”
“Jesus is using this parable here to teach the scribes and Pharisees about the kind of God the Father really is and about the mercy and compassion of God that we ourselves are to emulate in loving God and loving our neighbor”
“all of us come to God, religion, the Bible in different ways because of our own personal experience and if we're going to be peacemakers in our time, we're going to have to listen to the stories of the enemy, those that we have on the other side of the table”
“As Christians let us all be agents of reconciliation. Let us go in search of our lost brothers and our lost sisters. But if we cannot bring them back home, please, let us not become obstacles to them when they find their way back home.”
“in our lives we've all had these moments where we've reached an all-time low and God gave us the grace to even feel shame for what we've done and in that moment we have to remember the Prodigal Son. Don't wait to return to the Father, go as you are.”
“This is what God is like: he always precedes us in love and runs towards us, sinners, to embrace us and to teach us to embrace each other”
“Today’s readings announce the good news of acceptance where all, irrespective of their dispositions, are eligible to a warm re-entry”
“the story is more about the unconditional love offered to the son by the father than it is about what the son may have done wrong”
“Parents, your presence makes a difference in the lives of your sons and daughters...You may not have money, sometimes you don't have time but you have moments and opportunities, reach into those things and express your love for them through those things”
