4th Sunday of Lent
(Sunday, 6th March 2016)
Have we lost the ability to have fun? – (Luke 15:1-3, 11-32)
For most of us our childhood’s high points were all about fun. Whether it be presents at Christmas, on swings in the park, playing cops and robbers or hide and seek. When there was any opportunity to have fun we as children were there.
So what happens to the child in us when we get older? Of course, as children, there was jealousy: “why is his slice bigger than mine?”; impatience: “are we there yet?”; hurt: “why won’t they play with me?”; demanding temper tantrums: “I want more ice cream”; but at five or six years of age these emotions are only fleeting and we tend to get over them very quickly. However, when we get older our jealousy, impatience, hurt, and tempers tend to linger much longer and so touch us more deeply.
For the two brothers in this weeks Gospel, the fun appears to be totally gone out of both of their lives. The younger one is impatient and demanding, while the older brother – who is initially jealous of his sibling’s flight into freedom – now feels hurt because the father welcomes the prodigal son back home with an extravagant feast.
The prodigal son’s life was a mess. He had hit rock bottom, as his bad habits had completely taken him over.
Most of us don’t hit rock bottom, but we can still find it difficult to free ourselves from our bad habits/our sins and turn our lives fully to God. And Lent is a time for us to confront these bad habits. Habits of attraction, that at times we over indulge in, or that we find ourselves tempted to misuse.
With these habits comes the strong temptation to continue doing the wrong thing. Listen to the words of St Augustine when he realised that it was in Jesus that his true happiness lay: “While I was deliberating whether I would serve Christ, I was at war with myself and torn. Thus I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more bitterly than ever. It was, in fact, my former girlfriends, who still enthralled me. In my mind they tugged at my fleshly garments and softly whispered: “Are you going to part with us? Will we never be with you any more? And I thought to myself: “Do you think you can live without them?”.
It made Augustine famously say “Convert me Lord, but not today“.
However, we do know that St Augustine did turn back to the Lord and left his attachments behind, but not without a struggle.
Jesus helps us with this struggle and puts the fun back into our lives, while satisfying all our needs, “I have come so that they can have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). However, to achieve this life he tells us we must become like children again: “unless you become like children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:3).
So let it be our challenge this Lent to reflect on those things that prevents Jesus from gaining full access to our lives; and let it be our goal to re-learn what it means to be a child and why Christ calls on us to be childlike: humble, innocent, open, hopeful, joyful and most importantly ready to have fun.