The false ideology of independence

Homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent C
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
14 March 2010


I am going to spend just a few minutes reflecting on the beginning of this long parable of the prodigal son, most likely the most popular and profound of Jesus' parables. I want to focus on the decision that gets the whole story going. The decision the father makes to grant his son's request to receive his inheritance early. This is a most insulting request by the younger son. He is in effect saying to his father - I wish you were dead. I want my inheritance now. You are not worth waiting for. You are not worth my obedience and love. I want my independence from you.

Certainly the younger son had no right to make such a request of his father. He had not earned his inheritance. And yet the father was willing to give the son what he had not earned. The inheritance became not a right of the younger son, but a gift. And this gift makes a huge difference in the story. I wonder all the time whether the father had just given the son the part of his inheritance that he had earned, whether the son would have trusted in the love the father had for him. The father gave everything as a gift, and so somewhere in the back of the mind of the son and in the depths of his heart, he knew that his father always gave everything that he could. Eventually the son decided to come back because his father is generous. We do not hear in the story whether this was a hard decision from the father. Obviously his son had none of the virtues that he needed to be a good steward of the inheritance. This was a most careless investment by the father. Yet he loved his son, so much so that he could not refuse even a most offensive request. He gives him all his inheritance, knowing his son better than his son knew himself.

Would we have done the same thing if given the same opportunity the father had? I don't think I would have. It is a most imprudent decision. It is a hard decision. The decision to let the son go, even though every penny would be wasted, and the son might be lost forever, proves to be the right decision. But boy is it a hard one to make. It proves to be the right decision when we see the embrace of the father and the son at the end of the story. At the end of the story, because the love of the father is revealed in all its beauty, the father and the son have a covenant of love that can never again be broken. At the end of the story, we see that the older son has only a contract of slavish obedience to his father. There is no real love between them, and no covenant. If the older son knew the heart of his father, he too would have run to greet his younger brother. The older son doesn't know his father at all, even though he had been with him the whole time.

Both sons, in their own ways, did what we see done all the time. They tried to grow up. They tried to become men, although both did a most poor job of doing so in the short term. The younger son stretched the limits of selfishness, and threw away his relationship with his father by running away. The older son stretched the limits of pride, allowing his heart to grow cold and calculated, and went far away from his father interiorly, entering only into a contract with him, even as the father wanted a relationship of love.

Both sons succumb to the false ideology of independence. They want to find out who they are apart from the love of their father. They want an identity isolated from every relationship and obligation. The younger son goes about this exteriorly, refusing to obey his father in anything, and the older son interiorly, obeying his father only minimally, and never from the heart. This is the false ideology that plagues most young people who are trying to grow up. It is a fantasy that runs and runs and runs in the minds and hearts of almost all young people. It is supported by the culture, and almost impossible to shut off. The goal is to challenge and to doubt every gift of love they have received, whether it be from their families or from the Church, and to assert an independence, and a restless search to find out 'who I really am' apart from how I was raised. Cardinal George in a recent book said that such an exercise to find our independence, is the most futile of all. Yet it is an exercise that most every one of us engages in. Yet from the moment of our conception, each one of us is in relationship. There is never a moment in our lives when we are unrelated to others. We do not, and cannot exist in isolation. Our identity eventually comes, not from what we have or what we do, but from who we are related to. There is no escaping relationship, and no identity for a human person, that exists independent of relationship. Especially if our ultimate vocation is to love, the question of our identity rests squarely on the answer of who loves us most, and who we love the most. That is who we are.

Woe to us whose answer to this question ultimately lies in our independence, in our love of self. Thanks be to God, in the story, the younger son, because of the risk taken by the father in giving him his inheritance, comes to his senses and realizes that who he really is is a son who is loved by his father with a love beyond all reason and all telling. He realizes that the question of who he really is is a question of who he is most deeply related to, and who loves him most. The younger son returns to that identity where he is most secure. The older son, unfortunately, is locked in a false ideology, a false security, and a love of self and locks himself out of the loving embrace of his father.+m