In his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis wrote the
following:
“A Church that ‘goes forth’ is a
Church whose doors are open. Going out to others in order to reach the fringes
of humanity does not mean rushing out aimlessly into the world. Often it is
better simply to slow down, to put aside our eagerness in order to see and
listen to others, to stop rushing from one thing to another and to remain with
someone who has faltered along the way. At times we have to be like the father
of the prodigal son, who always keeps his door open so that when the son
returns, he can readily pass through it.”
In light of recent discussions about a place in the Church for those in
“irregular situations” (homosexuals, cohabiting couples, those in civil marriages,
the divorced and remarried) we need to ask: are we more like the father or the
older brother in this parable?
The younger son’s sin was egregious; he essentially told his father to
drop dead. His inheritance was more important than his father, and he didn’t
want to wait for his father’s death to get it. “As far as I’m concerned, Dad,
you’re already dead; I only want your money, not you.”
Yet the father keeps the door open for the rebellious son to come home;
he embraces and kisses him before the boy confesses his guilt (a key detail in
the story), welcoming him into the company of the family even before a formal
reconciliation has taken place.
The older son offers no such welcome; he has closed the doors and
locked them tight. From his perspective his father’s actions are a terrible
injustice. He has been a faithful son, but he was never given a party. Yet his
loser little brother demanded his inheritance while his father was still alive,
wasted it on immoral living, and then has the nerve to come back home--and he
gets a party? How is that even remotely fair? As far as the older son is
concerned, when his younger brother left home it was good riddance--and don’t
let the door smack you as I close it on your way out.
The father’s response to the older boy was essentially this: “Son, it’s
true you have always been part of the family--but we really weren’t a family while
your brother was gone. What you were a part of was incomplete. Now that your
brother is home we’re a family again, we’re whole, and we have to celebrate
that!”
Pope Francis wrote:
“The Church is called to be the
house of the Father, with doors always wide open. One concrete sign of such
openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone,
moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a
closed door.”
Are the doors of our communities open not only to those who fully see
their need to change, but also to those who are still on the journey toward
repentance? Can we find some place in our midst for them to feel the kind of welcome
that can lead them to the light?
The younger son’s epiphany came in a pig sty; can we open our doors,
find some place for people in irregular situations in the Church, so their
epiphany can come in the arms of the Body of Christ?
