Crisis and conversion

We are being challenged to a conversion of thinking and behavior that our current crisis calls us to in the Diocese of Albany.

Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger

The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:11-32) comes up more than once in our Lenten readings. Or is it better titled the Parable of the Prodigal Father! Who of the three arguably dysfunctional family members is the most prodigal or wastefully extravagant? I say dysfunctional because this is clearly a family in crisis. I use the word “crisis” not in the histrionic — and more common — colloquial sense of ohmygodwhaddarewegonnado now as in the classical sense from the word’s Greek origins of a crucial decision point to change for the better or the worse. In other words, a moment when only two alternatives are clear and the status quo is not a viable or sustainable option.

In an interview published in this week’s The Evangelist, you may read of a graphic example of a contemporary crisis right in our own diocesan family. I do not say our Diocese is dysfunctional like the family in the parable, but it certainly will be if our response to the crisis is to miss the lesson of the parable and to settle for things as they are. One sign that the younger son was ready to make a change for the better was his realization (“coming to his senses”) that he could not go on with the condition he was in (cf. Lk 15:17). One may see this as a wise strategy or just an act of desperation. Did he have any other choice?

I am far from convinced that he had undergone a total conversion. He did finally start thinking. Till now his life had been largely unreflective, his behavior impulsive. He just lived in the moment, pretty much to maintain his own lifestyle. He began having a conversation. With himself! A good place to start any kind of move in a better direction, albeit just on his own. Realizing he would be much better off going home and relying on his father’s likely consistency (that is, his ongoing crazy generosity!), he came up with an all-too-rehearsed sounding speech that he figured would get him back in his father’s graces. But was he really a different person or just as manipulative as before when he basically saw his father as a cash cow, having begged him for the money he would be entitled to when his father died. 

Since Jesus is narrating this story, we ought not pass over its implications for our modus operandi, not only in everyday family life but in our larger common human family, in our parishes and in the Church at large. The father is this prodigal God whom we know actually does send his Son — the only one he had! — to die for us so that we could inherit all he has. How often do we take this for granted? And how often do we treat the Church, his body, the same way? It will always be there. We can always come home to it even if we’ve gone off and squandered the privilege of being Catholic by calling ourselves such and demanding to be so treated, while not always living up to what the name means? Much to reflect on here as we face the realities that the interview I referred to confront us with. We are being challenged to a conversion of thinking and behavior that our current crisis calls us to.

I had mentioned that having a conversation is a good start. It had never occurred to me before that the word “conversion” is contained within the word “conversation.” We need, as the younger son, to come to our senses, think and listen, which is what ought to happen in a good conversation. And we must make decisions. 

We might wonder why the father had seemingly gone along with his son’s idiotic ways. I doubt he approved of them. This is exactly what the older son cannot understand. Why does God let some people do what they do without condemning them? Why does the Church allow so many sinners in? The younger son should be “excommunicated” according to his older brother who, by the way, cannot even acknowledge him as such when he returns. He confronts his father about “this son of yours” for whom he “had to” throw a lavish feast in his honor (cf. Lk 15:30), an honor the older son feels that he has earned and never got. Not so, says the father, dispelling any sense of entitlement from the invitation to come to the feast, which he wants both his sons to enjoy — he wants his family together! — not because they earned it but because he loves them and wants them to celebrate his love.

It may not occur to us often enough that the Mass is a kind of banquet, a celebration of love. Not just any “love,” but divine love, which is, as we learn from Jesus, incredibly profligate, forgiving and sacrificial, far beyond our human capacity to completely comprehend. It is far from free. It cost him his whole life on Calvary, which it re-presents (that is, makes real in the present). To have access to this love, however, to be able to receive it requires a conversion, a metanoia to use the Greek word, in the sense of the admonition we heard on Ash Wednesday: turn away from sin and believe in the Gospel. 

To put this in theological terms, the younger son seems to have come close to what is called “imperfect contrition.” He is sorry because he does not want to live in hell. Does he really love his father? Does the older son even? It seems both still see their father as someone they can count on … IF. But there are no real ifs in the father’s unconditional love except clinging to a disordered and sinful way of living. The younger son was at least making a move in that direction by seemingly abandoning his errors, albeit without total conversion. The one lesson he had learned is that he could count on his father to bail him out of the mess he had made of his life. And that’s a good enough of a confession to be absolved. I worry more about the older son, however.

The older son is like so many loyal and long-suffering Catho­lics who are, in a sense, “always there.” Like the older son, they work hard, give generously and follow the rules. When the Church makes changes by reassessing its resources and refocusing on its priorities in order to be true to its core mission, the salvation of souls — everyone’s soul, it may seem to some to be wasting, even throwing out what their good efforts produced. Like some of the wonderful church structures our parents and grandparents built that we can no longer afford. And after all that work we did to please the loving Father, who loves us all!