Let’s learn to rejoice like the father of the Prodigal Son, Pope Francis says

Jesus Christ’s Parable of the Prodigal Son is a lesson about forgiveness, rejoicing, and how to show a true welcome to those struggling with their sins, Pope Francis said before the Angelus on Sunday.

The parable “leads us to God’s heart who always forgives compassionately and tenderly,” the pope said March 27. “Always, God always forgives. We are the ones who get tired of asking for forgiveness, but he always forgives.”

He spoke to a crowd of about 30,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Angelus, according to estimates from the Vatican Gendarmerie.

For Pope Francis, Jesus’ parable shows “that God is a Father who not only welcomes us back, but rejoices and throws a feast for his son who has returned home after having squandered all his possessions. We are that son, and it is moving to think about how much the Father always loves us and waits for us.”

The Parable of the Prodigal Son, recounted in the Gospel of Luke’s fifteenth chapter, tells the story of a young man who asks his father for his share of his inheritance, then leaves the country to live a life of dissolution. After losing everything, the son returns home thinking he can beg his father to give him a menial job and a lowly place in his household. His father instead runs to welcome his lost son and throws a celebration for him.

The father’s loyal son—the prodigal son’s older brother—perceives this treatment as a wrong. This older son, Pope Francis said, “goes into a crisis in front of his father,” and such fatherly behavior towards an errant relative can also put many of us today in a crisis.

“We are tempted to take his side, at least in part: he had always done his duty, he had not left home, and so he becomes indignant on seeing the father embracing his son again after having behaved so badly,” the pope commented.

The older son tells his father he objects to celebrating “this son of yours.” He professes not to understand his father.

“These words illustrate the older son’s problem,” the pope commented. “He bases his relationship with his father solely on pure observance of commands, on a sense of duty. This could also be our problem, the problem among ourselves and with God: to lose sight that he is a Father and to live a distant religion, composed of prohibitions and duties.”

Such a habit makes us behave with “rigidity towards our neighbor, whom we no longer see as a brother or sister.”

The older son’s words distance him from his own brother and he “risks remaining outside of the house,” said Pope Francis. In response, the father pleaded to him: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

“He tries to make him understand that for him, every child is all of his life,” the pope commented. “The ones who know this well are parents, who are very close to feeling like God does.” The pontiff quoted the nineteenth century French novelist Honoré de Balzac, one of whose characters said “When I became a father, I understood God.”

The father in Jesus’ parable opens his heart to his dutiful son and explains: “it was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive.”