Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday)

Readings: Jos 5:9a, 10-12; 2 Cor 5:17-21; Lk 15:1-3, 11-32

From the Gospel: “But we had to celebrate and rejoice!  This brother of yours was dead, and has

	Lk 17,12
	© CMM-Mariannhill magnify

come back to life.  He was lost, and is found” (Lk 15:32).

Thought for the day: “Underway;” with this one word I describe what this story of the kind father and lost son as a whole wants to convey to us.  Man is an unfinished being, open to the future.  Every static statement about him that wants to hold him fast in formulas and definitions comes up short. 
The lost son is never “defined” conclusively in the story; not in his situation before leaving home, since there he considered himself simply at home in the house of his father, nor later.  Neither is he solidified as the one who wants to be independent and free and therefore asks for his inheritance (which, by the way, is not branded as wrong in the story). 
Our life (and human history) has not yet reached its definitive end.  Therefore it cannot yet be valued conclusively.  The Christian view of man forbids the evaluation of a person simply on the basis of the here and now.  Certainly there are things we know by experience, which are erroneous ways for us and for others and can be recognized as such by us.  There are habits that are learned through bad customs and sins and that can be changed only with difficulty.  Nevertheless, in a very profound sense, every man, until his last breath, is open to God in his individual salvation history.
(Bishop Dr. Joachim Wanke)