Marie Eugenie: 4th Sunday of Lent C 2013

Today’s gospel is a popular gospel.  It is popularly known as the parable of the prodigal son.  But it has other titles too depending on what angle one would like to look at this story.  For example it has also been called the parable of the forgiving and loving father.  So also, the parable of the two lost sons.  I won’t be surprised if in the coming years somebody would come up with a reflection on the parable of the fattened calf.  I would like to listen to that homily.

Today I would like to focus my reflection on the anger of the elder brother.  You can hear the anger in his voice. “Look, he said, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.”

But this is not just ordinary anger.  It is called a resentment – a persistent ill-will harbored in the heart for a long time.  It is prolonged anger which found its way out of the elder brother upon the arrival of the younger brother. 

No it is not an ill will primarily directed to the younger and erring brother.  It was an anger towards the father.  And no it was not an ill will towards the father because he accepted back the younger brother.  That was just used as an occasion to express and ventilate the resentment, the last straw, the trigger, so to say.  Rather it was an ill will, an anger hidden for many years in his heart while he was laboring alongside his father.  “Look all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders.”

Why this anger?  Why this resentment?    When somebody is angry and is saying so many things all at once, take note of what he or she is saying, for these can be revealing of the real reasons for one’s anger.  And if you notice, most often that anger is about something else and it was merely occasioned by another circumstance which may actually have very little to do with the real reason for anger.

In our gospel today the elder son is angry not primarily with his younger brother but with his Father.  He slaved for his father all those years, obeying his every command.  The anger is coming from a heart that deeply resented the father, a disposition of someone who took his work with the father as the work of a slave.  All those years he was not a son working for the father.  All those years he was a slave working for a master

Resentment is a silent anger fed by the mind more than a situation or circumstance.  It comes from a perception, from the way we interpret events in our lives.  That is why sometimes what is said in this type of anger seems quite preposterous.  For example the son in the gospel said – “you never gave me even a young goat to feast with my friends.”  In seething resentment anything and everything can be interpreted as something done against you.  In fact the father has to assure him saying “But Son, everything I have is yours.”  But the son saw things differently because of his resentment.

Today we look to St. Marie Eugenie who teaches us how to see things, how to accept things, how to view things in our lives.  Marie Eugenie had many reasons to be resentful in her life – her upbringing, her reversal of fortune when his father went bankrupt, the painful separation of the family that followed, and the sudden death of her mother.  But St. Marie Eugenie held on to two important attitudes which made her live life contentedly, happily and holy. 

The first and most important attitude says Marie Eugenie is humility, a desire to be like Jesus in humility.  Resentment many times flows from entitlement.  Listen for example to what we say when we get mad.  Wala ka kabalaslan, ingrato ka, after all the things I have done for you.  Many times these may not be verbalized but these are feelings – feelings of being abandoned, feelings of being surrounded by disloyal persons.  Resentment flows from entitlement.  But Marie Eugenie proposes humility.  Humility is living in the truth of what we are – that God is my all, my creator, and all that I am, all that I have is a gift from God.  Humility is the truth.  Entitlement is mere pretension.  Thus for Marie Eugenie humility is the basis of spiritual life.  Humility is a virtue that expands the heart, makes us happy and full of life, fearless and full of energy.

The second flows from the first - the sense of gratitude for being loved with a great love.  When we acknowledge our place in humility we will actually find ourselves loved.  This is important because most often people who are resentful feel unattended to, they feel unappreciated, they feel they were not given the time and the priority.  It’s a general feeling of being unloved.  They are good people mind you, and they work hard, some even work on overdrive, most of which are proving – I’m going to prove to you, I’m going to prove to you, you will see.  And many times because of these feelings of lack, we come out burned out, we come out feeling used and so we come out angry. 

The sense of gratitude for being loved stands as a direct result when we live in humility – thus again humility is the basis for spiritual life.  This sense of gratitude is an important attitude and identity at the very core of our person. 

Imagine yourself in your retirement or even in the middle of your responsibility and you are filled with bitterness because after all those years you held such grudge because you feel that the congregation, your feel that your family, your husband was just using you for their own ends.  Imagine what resentment, what bitterness one must be carrying when all the while one is thinking that he or she is just being used like a slave driven to work, for what – for nothing.

 In this 4^th Sunday of Lent we recall the death of St. Marie Eugenie which the church celebrates as her birthday to heaven, her feast day, humility which is the truth of who we are, and the sense of gratitude of being loved, are both proposed for our reflection and for our life.