Without reconciliation, there is no joy

March 18, 2007 -- Fourth Sunday of Lent

By Bishop Robert Morneau

	Bishop Robert Morneau
	Questions for reflection: 1. How has God called you to be an agent of reconciliation? 2. In whose love are you rooted? 3. Why is sin so hideous?

One of the beauties of sacred Scripture is that it deals with all of life: joy and sorrow; grace and sin; kindness and cruelty; mercy and resentment. Nothing is left out. Divine revelation opens for us how we are to see and respond to every dimension of life.

L e n t
• Everyday People, Everyday Faith articles
• Other Lent articles

This Sunday we hear about the Passover event in which God liberated the Israelites and called them to a new freedom. We hear about St. Paul's concern with reconciliation and how Jesus calls us to join Him in the divine work of healing. And, in that powerful and so familiar passage from St. Luke, we hear again the story of the prodigal son and the reaction of his return by his father and elder brother. Liberation, reconciliation, mercy - words speaking of our human condition.

Back in the 1930's, Bruno Schulz wrote a strange, convoluted story The Street of Crocodiles (trans. by Celina Wieniewska, New York: Penguin Books, 1977). In discussing this work with friends, none of us were clear about the ultimate meaning of the story but we did understand the human experiences articulated: resentment, emptiness, the smell of sin.

Resentment (a la the elder brother in today's Gospel). "I had a hidden resentment against my mother for the ease with which she had recovered from Father's death. She had never loved him, I thought, and as Father had not been rooted in any woman's heart, he could not merge with any reality and was therefore condemned to float eternally on the periphery of life, in half-real regions, on the margins of existence" (106).

The elder brother did not feel rooted in love, in his father's heart. That lack of love led to resentment and anger, not just at his brother but toward his father and life. That wrath blocked his engagement in life, placing him at the far margins of the community in a dreary, lonely isolation. Without reconciliation, the kind that Jesus offers, there was no peace and no joy.

". . . the mornings were full of aimless bustle" (53). There is a prison known as exile. The Israelites experienced this in Egypt. They were away from their homeland, their culture, their temple. Their mornings and evenings were filled with aimless wandering. Then God freed them from their bondage and they passed over from death to life.

Sin throws us into aimlessness. The intellect is darkened and the will is weakened when we stop loving and become self-absorbed. In his novel, Schulz writes about "the hideousness of sin" (134). The rebellious son in the Gospel experienced just that and finally decided to return to his true home. It was his father's mercy that set him free.

The Street of Crocodiles presents a question that demands serious reflection: "What was there to save us?" (157). St. Paul has an answer for this question; namely, we are reconciled (saved) in Christ. But then, having been given this grace, we are to become Christ's ambassadors and take on the ministry of reconciliation.

Sacred Scripture contains "the eternal barrel of memories" (155), some good, some bad. In the end, the only memory that really matters is God's mercy and love revealed in Christ.

(Bp. Morneau is the auxiliary bishop of the Green Bay Diocese and pastor of Resurrection Parish in Allouez.)