If you want to understand how prodigal God is, just take a close and careful look at nature. Nature is constantly creating something new, for our universe is constantly expanding. On earth, nature is "teeming with everything, prodigal, fertile, overabundant, wasteful. Why else do we have 90 percent more brain cells than we need, and why else is nature scattering billions of seeds, of virtually everything, all over the planet every second? And if life is so prodigal, what does this say about God, its author? God, as we see in both nature and in scripture, is overgenerous, over lavish, over extravagant, overprodigious, overrich, and over patient. If nature, scripture, and experience are to be believed, God is the absolute antithesis of everything that is stingy, miserly, frugal, narrowly calculating, or sparing in what it doles out." (Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, in "Sacred Fire.")
Our prodigal God is ever hopeful, always infinitely patient and loving with all His people. He is constantly inviting us to a deeper relationship with Him, constantly "seeding" us, hoping to grow new life in us. God tells us to forget our rocky past, our painful sins, our lukewarm approach to prayer and generous giving, and to see that He wants to accomplish something new in us. God keeps giving us chance after chance after chance to grow in understanding ourselves, our lives, our God. Jesus describes this in the Parable of the Sower:
"God, the sower, goes out to sow, and he scatters his seed generously, almost wastefully everywhere - on the road, among the rocks, among the thorns, on bad soil, and on rich soil. No farmer would ever do this. Who would waste seed on soil that can never produce a harvest? God, it seems, does not ask that question but simply keeps scattering his seed everywhere, over generously.... There is both a huge challenge and a huge consolation in that. The challenge, of course, is to respond to the infinite number of invitations that God scatters on our path from minute to minute. The consolation is that, no matter how many of God's invitations we ignore, there will always be an infinite number of others. No matter how many we have already turned down, there are new ones awaiting us each minute. When we have gone through thirty-nine days of Lent without praying or changing our lives, there is still a fortieth day to respond." (Rolheiser.)
God's invitations are meant to grow us into saints. You could say, then, that a saint is someone who is constantly alert to God's invitations to maturity, and, instead of turning away, says "yes" to them. We know what those little seeds are that want to germinate in us, those little whispers that float in the back of our minds that we push away. Or those invitations that arrive as unexpected people or unexpected phone calls to do or try something that is outside our comfort zone, outside our notion of generosity.
Our white, Catholic Pastor, with the approval of our white and black church leaders and trustees, has invited a black, Evangelical congregation with a woman Pastor to share our Church with us. The Pastor uses a wheelchair; the former space they were renting is not handicap-accessible, but our Church is. They will arrive each Sunday around 1:30 PM after our 12 Noon Mass is finished.
Our Evangelical congregation, our new family members, came today to meet us during our after-church hospitality. Both our groups were moving beyond their comfort zones, a little shy, a little nervous. Our congregation representatives waited by the food table. Then we saw the children enter, and it was only natural to call out "Do you like cookies? We have some waiting here for you!" Big grins came on the faces of children and adults. "We're so happy to share our Church home with you," we said, as they joined us, enjoying the food and drinks. When God has given us such abundance as a lovely, handicap-accessible worship space, we believe God has invited us to be generous in sharing such abundance!
Sometimes when we hear the word "saint" we get nervous, thinking that if we're not perfect, we couldn't possibly be saintly. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We need to take saints off their pedestals and realize that they were and are people just like us, with faults and failings.
Brother Andre Bessette, who died in 1937, a member of the Holy Cross Congregation in Montreal, Canada, had a great devotion to St. Joseph, and was a noted healer and worker of miracles - all of which he ascribed to the supernatural intervention of St. Joseph, or the Blessed Mother.
Charles DeCelles, in his article "Brother Andre Bessette: The Later Years" (in "The Catholic Leader," vol. 16) notes
"Brother Andre's reputation as a miracle worker was truly widespread, from Canada to the Northeastern part of the United States, then to California, Mexico, and Brazil. Colonal George Ham wrote in 1922 that some 30, 000 people expressed their gratitude to Brother Andre for physical or spiritual healings they had received from him sometime during the previous decade."
Today the magnificent St. Joseph's Basilica, which was a dream of his, stands on top of Mount Royal, and "even today, many people are healed of numerous infirmities through the intercession of Brother Andre, St. Joseph's great friend. The walls of the Oratory are covered with wheelchairs, crutches, and braces."
Yet even this very saintly man was not "perfect" or without limitations. DeCelles recounts that "tiredness and sickness sometimes resulted in Andre being impatient with visitors. He would catch himself and become filled with remorse....He was timid. This is part of the reason he avoided interviews and being photographed."
The great Dorothy Day, tireless crusader for the poor, ardent anti-war activist, and founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was not always a "perfect" mother. In his article "Dorothy Day: Future Saint, Imperfect Parent," ("America" magazine, Feb. 8, 2017) Fr. James Martin, S.J., tells us about Day's relationship with her daughter Tamar as recounted by Tamar's daughter Kate Hennessey in her new book "Dorothy Day: the World Will Be Saved By Beauty." Fr. Martin, a great admirer of Dorothy Day, observes that this searingly honest look at Dorothy the mother, describes her as an imperfect parent, especially when Tamar was a child:
"In some early chapters 'imperfect' may be the most charitable word you could use. 'Indifferent' might be more accurate. With the Catholic Worker consuming Dorothy's time, she sometimes forgot about her child. 'She would let me stay up late while she was talking,' Tamar told Hennessey, 'and I'd be forgotten while playing in the bath.' " When Tamar was an adult, Dorothy wrote her a letter harshly disapproving of some of her decisions, which caused a temporary rift between them. Martin says "Of course Dorothy and Tamar loved each other. But sometimes they seemed not to know how."
What was Fr. Martin's reaction to these flaws and lists in Dorothy's character? He says "Far from discouraging me, the book inspired me. Edified me. Dorothy was imperfect at times. So am I. She's on her way to sainthood. I'm not, but I can try, even if I sin."
With such a prodigal God Who constantly offers us forgiveness and chance after chance to start over again, how can we NOT try? The saints aren't divine. They continue sinning until the day they die. But, knowing themselves how they sin and/or fail, they also know how ultra-generous in mercy our God is, and they keep saying "yes" to His patient invitations to be "seeded" for new life. Brother Andre, impatient with his visitors, would catch himself, filled with remorse. Dorothy Day eventually reached out to reconcile with her daughter Tamar.
Saints keep accepting God's invitations to go beyond their comfort zones. Saints know the limits of their own temperaments, and know they need God to learn how to forgive, learn how to be patient, learn how to apologize, learn how to love. They hear God say to them "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!" And saints listen to God's voice. They do not harden their hearts, they open them. May we learn from them how to keep trying, how to keep saying "yes" to an abundant God Who wants us to become abundant in generosity.
"From God's abundance we get a universe that is too huge and prodigal to be imagined. That is a challenge not just to the mind and the imagination, but especially to the heart, to become huge and generous." (Rolheiser)