While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. Luke 15:20
Are you as struck as I am by the love of the father in this Sunday’s Gospel reading, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15:1-32? After the sinful son comes to his senses (Luke 15:17), he examines his conscience, prepares to confess his sins to his father, and turns away from his life of sin to go back home to his father. He remembers his father’s goodness, giving him a reason to trust that he will be cared for, even merely as a servant rather than as a son. When he gets near his home, the father doesn’t wait for him; he runs to him out of love and joy. His beloved son has returned home.
This is just how God the Father sees you and me when we are examining our consciences and preparing to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation. Whether your disposition is running to the Father to ask for forgiveness, feeling nervous, or hesitating to get in line for Confession, imagine God the Father running towards you, so joyful to see you making the effort to come to Him out of sorrow for your sins. Can you see the Father in your mind’s eye running toward you in love? Even if it’s difficult to imagine, He loves you and is ready to shower you with His love and mercy before you’ve even decided to turn back to Him.
Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “Confession is an act of honesty and courage; an act of entrusting ourselves, beyond sin, to the mercy of a loving and forgiving God. It is an act of the prodigal son who returns to his Father and is welcomed by him with the kiss of peace. It is easy, therefore, to understand why ‘every confessional is a special and blessed place from which there is born new and uncontaminated a reconciled individual – a reconciled world!'” (Reconciliatio et Paenitentia).
Read that first line of the quote again. It takes honesty and courage to trust that God the Father loves us even more than He is upset with our sins. Our sins are not greater than His love and mercy. If they were, how could God be all powerful and all good? Somehow the evil of sin would be greater than Him. But this is not so. Our God is too good, too merciful, too loving a Father to let anything come between us and His merciful love.
St. Paul wrote, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39). Wow, that Bible verse is always so powerful to me. Nothing external can separate us from God. The only possible thing that could separate us from God’s love is our own free will. In other words, WE are the only ones that have the power to reject God’s love and separate ourselves from Him (CCC 1732, 1739 and 1861).
Lord, let me never abuse my freedom and separate myself from You. Instead, help me to trust in Your goodness, mercy, and love and always return to You in the Sacrament of Reconciliation when I have sinned.