Septuagesima
It celebrates 63 days before Holy Easter.
The second Sunday of the Trinity is dedicated to the very instructive parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:13-32). The parable tells of a rich young man who wastefully squandered his wealth in a far country and ended up tending pigs. Then he repented and returned to his father, who received him with infinite love and affection.
The evangelist Luke saved us this parable as follows
“There was a father who had two sons. The latter, at one time, demanded his share of the inheritance and fled to distant countries, where he squandered his fortune in debauchery. The money once ran out and there was a great famine in the region. He was forced to become a swineherd and try to feed himself on the stinking and vile food of the pigs. In his turmoil he remembered the aristocratic life in his father’s house. He remembered that even his father’s slaves lived incomparably better lives than his. Then he made the great decision to return home and ask his father to forgive him and hire him as his slave. But his loving father accepted him as his son and treated him properly, despite the protests of his eldest son, because “he was dead and came to life, and indeed he was found”.
The parable is inexhaustible in meanings, since, as it is said, the entire work of the Divine Economy is found within it. The deeper meaning of the parable is fourfold:
a. The hopeless condition to which the sinner reaches.
b. The necessity of repentance and its saving effects.
c. The magnitude of divine Mercy on which even the most sinful can rely, so that they never reach despair. No sin, however great it may be thought, can overcome the benevolent opinion of God and
d. The avoidance of the feeling of self-sufficiency of the justified, as the eldest son considered himself.
So if we feel our true spiritual condition and honestly confess our mistakes and the waste of the talents that God has given us, we will understand that this Sunday we are all celebrating and we are all, in a way, prodigal sons, removed from ” House of our Heavenly Father”.
