Sunday of the Prodigal Son. Our Venerable Father Ephrem the Syrian (373).
1 Corinthians 6:12-20. Luke 15:11-32.
Read Luke 15:11-32
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
The parable in today’s gospel reading would have made those who heard Jesus tell it gasp.
The father lowered himself out of love to a shocking degree when he ran to his prodigal younger son. A man of his economic and social standing just would not do that. That would not comport with his dignity. What he would have to do in hiking up and holding his garments to be able to run would have been seen as undignifying him even further.
Jesus was not only revealing the love of God, hidden within this parable is that God had already acted like this toward us in the Incarnation, in God becoming human. As St. Paul writes in Philippians 2:
“Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
This is the mind which the father in the parable was trying to impart to the elder son.