Today is Mothering Sunday, and we welcome the whole S. Michael’s School community as it joins with the Parish for the Mass this morning. As is the custom on this day, we bless flowers and give them to our mothers and caregivers. It is good to have the School and Parish choirs singing together, and to have school pupils reading the Gospel chorally, leading prayers, reading and serving. I am particularly glad to welcome Archdeacon John Day who is our preacher today. After eight years at S. Barnabas Fendalton, he now has a role encouraging the mission of all the church communities in the Diocese. After the service you are all invited to morning tea in the hall and to patronise the sausage sizzle in the playground.
Next Sunday, Passion Sunday, in the place of Evensong at 7:00 pm we shall follow the way of the cross using our stations around the church, and with the powerful music of Franz Liszt.
We hear today Jesus’ wonderful story of two sons and their father, one of three stories about joyful finding that Luke brings to us in his Gospel. The other two are the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, which immediately precede our story. In these the main character (the shepherd and the householder) loses, searches for and finds the lost object, and then celebrates with friends and neighbours. In both cases the character goes to great lengths to find what is lost. Jesus presents an image of how God, like the shepherd or the householder, makes a very costly effort to bring back the lost.
In today’s story, the Prodigal Son, this theme is taken further. It is truly said that the whole of the good news that Christian faith proclaims is summed up in this story. When we are lost or in some way estranged, God always offers us the gift of forgiveness and restoration to the community. Repentance, the turning around to new life, happens when we are able to accept this kind of God, to enter into the joy of being found, and then to live in this profound acceptance.
A good spiritual exercise for this time is to imagine ourselves as, in turn, the waiting father, the returning son, and the elder son, and to relate these to our own experience. As we make this spiritual journey, perhaps we may find within ourselves not only the lost child of God, but also the compassionately accepting mother and father that is God.
There are three weeks left of the School term, and three weeks left of our Lenten preparation for the Easter celebration. The Bishop has recently bidden us: “As we continue to journey along the road to Easter I am aware of the temptation to be so busy that there is insufficient time to pray and prepare ourselves for the Pascal Mystery. Do take time to step out of the busyness of life to remember whose you are and to whom you belong.”
May God bless you all.
Fr Peter Williams
Lent Readings: Week Four
Monday Isaiah 65: 17–21 John 4: 43–54
Tuesday Ezekiel 47: 1–9, 12 John 5: 1–3, 5–16
Wednesday Isaiah 49: 8–15 John 5: 17–30
Thursday Exodus 32: 7–14 John 5: 31–47
Friday Wisdom 2: 1, 12–22 John 7: 1–2, 10, 25–30
Saturday Jeremiah 11: 18–20 John 7: 40–52
