The father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son reveals to both sons, that all that he has is theirs!
Is there anything more a son could want? What more do you want? If someone offers you everything they have, what more could a person give or want?
Good parents pour out their lives for their children. Owners and entrepreneurs give their total self to their business. Successful married couples never limit their love.
If a person is willing to give all they have, then it follows
that they will also forgive any act committed.
This, of course, is exactly how we do not think. We want justice, recompense, and even revenge. We want the other person to feel the pain that hurt us. Yet, God tells us “My ways are not your ways,” (Is 55:9) and that the human heart is tortuous. (Jer 17:9)
Our hearts are innately wounded. They are flawed from within and so we indulge our passions, we feed our fears, and we gorge our urges. We stupefy our minds with useless media. And we choose wrongly because we failed to learn to discipline our lives. In other words, we live like prodigals.
God’s love, however, is not like ours. It is a father’s love. It is a brotherly love. It is an infinite love that loves despite the pain it endures when seeing a loved one self-destruct.
The Father’s mercy constantly offers, hoping against hope that the one who is lost will be found, the one who is dead in sin will repent. Mercy always offers friendship no matter what the state of the relationship.
God the Father of Mercies offers his friendship despite our rejection, but for us to receive, it demands we want it, to be open to it.
God cannot give us what we do not want.
He cannot give us what we do not understand.
To heal us of our hardness of heart, our Father allows us to suffer the consequences of our sins. In that suffering, experiencing the total depravity of our actions, do we come to realize what we lost. Friendship with the Father. The first son realized it.
Sadly, the second son rejects the Father’s mercy and stays hardened in his sinfulness.
In either case, the Father offers each son everything He has, yet, only one son wanted it. The other refused it. The question is:
Do you want what God has to offer: everything?
The price to have everything God offers is friendship. To be in communion with Him, He asks us to come back, repent, be reconciled, and be endowed with a new heart. A heart full of mercy for we have received his mercy.