SUNDAY OF THE PRODIGAL SON — Tone 6. Martyr Eutropius of Amasea, and with him Martyrs Cleonicus and Basiliscus (ca. 308).
Tone 6 Troparion (Resurrection)
The Angelic Powers were at Your tomb; the guards became as dead men. Mary stood by Your grave, seeking Your most pure body. You captured hell, not being tempted by it. You came to the Virgin, granting life. O Lord, Who rose from the dead,// glory to You.
Tone 4 Troparion (St. Nicholas)
The truth of your deeds has revealed you to your flock as a rule of faith, an image of meekness and a teacher of self-control; your humility exalted you; your poverty enriched you.// O Father Bishop Nicholas, pray to Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Tone 3 Kontakion (St. Nicholas)
You proved yourself to be be a holy priest, O Nicholas. You served God in Myra and lived the gospel of Christ. You offered your life for your people, And rescued the innocent from death. Therefore God has glorified you as a trustworthy guide of things divine.
Tone 3 Kontakion (from the Lenten Triodion)
I have recklessly forgotten Your glory, O Father; and among sinners I have scattered the riches which You gave me. And now I cry to You as the Prodigal: “I have sinned before You, O merciful Father; receive me as a penitent, // and make me as one of Your hired servants!”
Tone 6 Prokeimenon (Resurrection)
O Lord, save Your people, / and bless Your inheritance! (Ps. 27:9a)
V. To You, O Lord, will I call. O my God, be not silent to me! (Ps. 27:1a)
1 Corinthians 6:12-20 (Epistle)
All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
Tone 6
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!
V. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the heavenly God. (Ps. 90:1)
V. He will say to the Lord: “My Protector and my Refuge; my God, in Whom I trust.”(Ps. 90:2)
Luke 15:11-32 (Gospel)
Then He said: “A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’ And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry. Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’ But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. So he answered and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’”
Sunday of the Prodigal Son
The Sunday after the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee is the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. This parable of God’s forgiveness calls us to “come to ourselves” as did the prodigal son, to see ourselves as being “in a far country” far from the Father’s house, and to make the journey of return to God. We are given every assurance by the Master that our heavenly Father will receive us with joy and gladness. We must only “arise and go,” confessing our self-inflicted and sinful separation from that “home” where we truly belong (Luke 15:11-24).
After the Polyeleion at Matins, we first hear the lenten hymn “By the Waters of Babylon.” It will be sung for the next two Sundays before Lent begins, and it serves to reinforce the theme of exile in today’s Gospel.
Starting tomorrow, the weekday readings summarize the events of Holy Week. On Monday we read Saint Mark’s account of the Entry into Jerusalem. On Tuesday we read how Judas went to the chief priests and offered to betray the Lord. On the night before His death Christ tells His disciples that one of them will betray Him. He also predicts that they will desert Him, and that Peter will deny Him three times. On Wednesday the Gospel describes how Judas betrayed the Savior with a kiss. Thursday’s Gospel tells how Jesus was questioned by Pilate. On Friday we read the narrative of Christ’s crucifixion and death.
The Return to the House of the Father
In today’s Parable of the Prodigal Son, the panorama of man’s tragic fall unfolds before us, but also the magnificence of divine mercy, which imparts the gift of repentance and the possibility of return to the House of the Father, to the eternal Kingdom of Heaven. ‘God is love,’ proclaims the disciple of love, Saint John the Divine, and He possesses an everlasting Kingdom. He created man out of love to become a partaker of divine love and glory. He created the visible world for his sake and ‘sent angels to guard him’. God placed man in the Paradise of delight ‘to dress it and to keep it’. Man was created in the image and likeness of divine love with the purpose of the fulness of perfection. That is, he was meant to come to the likeness of this love.
Consequently, for as long as he does not have love as the content of his heart, he is not yet a real person. He is like the waters without form. For this reason the Apostle speaks literally when he says, ‘If I have not charity, I am nothing.’ In Paradise, in the House of the Father, man was given the highest honour, to dwell together with God and converse with Him face to Face. The vision of God was his nourishment, and it was his luminous garment. If he had freely and willingly kept the divine commandment, man would have become the author of his ‘likeness’, increasing continually with the ‘increase of God’, and he would have received praise from the Lord Himself.
Man was created ‘very good’ and, as the image of God, he was free and had his own will. The gift of free will streamed forth from God’s searchless love for mankind, which granted man the possibility, if he used it wisely, to assimilate all His treasures. In this way, the good things of God would have belonged both to Him Who possesses them by nature and offers them, and to man, who thirsts after them and receives them by grace. In fact, by the gift of free will, God fulfills His own words, ‘All that I have is thine.’ God wanted man to receive His gifts with integrity and gratitude, so that he may thus become a good steward of His grace.
The wise use of the gift of free will would have led man to deification, whereas its senseless use, as bitter experience has shown, drove him to destruction. Man’s nature was created sinless, without an inclination to iniquity. However, since he was endowed with freedom, God’s providence allowed the possibility to sin, depending on his intent. God wanted His reasonable creature to increase in freedom and collaboration with Him, that is, by his own inclination and helped by divine grace.
He did not desire man to do good by constraint, for any work which is not performed freely and voluntarily, however good it may be, can not have eternal value. In essence, the love of God presupposes the freedom of the beloved. It is humble and its nature is to leave the other free. It is destined for sons and not for slaves. God attracts with His love and wishes to keep none of those whom He loves near Him by force. This is the reason why man ought to convince Him through his repentance that he truly loves Him and longs to become His for ever. As Saint Silouan says, even in Paradise this is the question the Lord will ask from the work of His hands: ‘And you, do you love me?’ And the saved souls will answer: ‘Yea, Lord, we love Thee. Thou didst save us by Thy sufferings on the Cross, and now Thou hast given us the gift of the Kingdom of Heaven.’
Although, the awareness of sin is the first step, it is not sufficient for salvation, unless it is followed by the decision to return to God and the confession of sins before the Heavenly Father. These two acts, of returning and confessing, constitute the essence of the mystery of repentance and sacred confession.
Christ began His preaching saying, ‘Repent.’ Yet the gate of repentance is strait and the way of return is narrow. This journey conceals many dangers and temptations. It would be impossible for man to walk this way unto the end with his own strength. Repentance was given as a commandment, and wherever a commandment is fulfilled grace comes down from heaven. Thus, as soon as God discerns man’s intent, He sends His Spirit to co-work with his infirmity and divine grace performs those things which are ‘impossible with men’. The condition for repentance to bear fruit is the confession of sins which makes man truthful. The truth of man meets the mercy of the Spirit of Truth, which comes to strengthen and console him in his struggle. ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’
— Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou. At the Doors of Holy Lent. Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist, Essex, UK.
Sunday Bulletin February 25, 2024