The dissolute son, the deserter of a most loving father — what evils struck him down so far that, wasted with hunger, he gave himself over to the servitude of swine — we touched upon in the previous sermon, as far as we were able. Now let us follow his return, his penitence, with a better prayer at last and more joyful words. 'Returning into himself,' it says, 'he said: How many hirelings of my father abound in bread,' and so on (Luke 15:17). He returned into himself; first he returns into himself, so that he might return to the father — he who had first departed from himself when he departed from the father. He migrates from himself, and from a man passes wholly into a beast, unmindful of the father's devotion, forgetful of the grace of the one who begot him. 'How many hirelings of my father abound in bread, but I here perish with hunger.'
Hunger recalls the one whom satiety had banished; hunger gave him to relish the father, from whom abundance had taken away the very perception of his begetter. And if even unwilling hunger conferred so much, consider what voluntary fasting can bestow. A belly burdened toward vices lays the heart low, presses down the mind, so that it cannot perceive the heavenly love. 'The body,' it says, 'which is corrupted, weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that ponders many things' (Wisdom 9:15). Whence the Lord also says: 'Take heed lest your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness' (Luke 21:34).
The belly, therefore, must be tamed by the moderation of fasting, that the soul, unburdened, may be able to strain toward the heights, to climb to the virtues, and, wholly winged, to fly across to the very Author of piety. This Elijah proves, who, purged of the carnal weight by his continuance in the Lord's fast, became the conqueror of death and flew up to heaven (1 Kings 19:8; 2 Kings 2:11). 'I will arise, and go to my father.' He who said 'I will arise' was lying prostrate; he understood his fall, felt his ruin, saw himself lying in the slippery mire of foul dissipation, and therefore he cries out: 'I will arise, and go to my father.' With what hope? with what trust? with what confidence? With what hope? With that by which he is a father. I have lost what belonged to the son; he has not lost what belongs to the father.
With the father no stranger intercedes; within, in the father's very heart, dwells the very affection that intervenes and pleads. The father's inmost heart is pressed, ready to bring forth the son again through pardon. 'I will go to my father as a guilty man' — but the father, at the sight of his son, straightway covers over the guilt: he dissembles the judge, wishing rather to fulfill the begetter; and he quickly turns the sentence into pardon, he who desires his son to return, not to perish. 'I will arise, and go to my father, and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.' Confession lays the father open; penitence bespeaks the begetter. 'I have sinned against heaven and before you.' The one against whom sin is committed in heaven is not an earthly father, but also a heavenly one; therefore he added, 'Before you.' To him who is in heaven and on earth, all things that are done are before his eyes.
'I have sinned against heaven and before you, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.' This man set out abroad and fled to a far country, but he did not escape his accusers, his witnesses — the eyes of the divine Father. This David reveals more clearly, saying thus: 'Whither shall I go from your spirit? and whither shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present; if I take my wings at the dawn, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. For even thither shall your hand lead me, and your right hand shall hold me' (Psalm 139:7-10). This man sees that throughout the whole world sins stand bare before the eyes of God: that neither heaven, nor earth, nor the seas, nor the abyss, nor the very night can veil sins from God.
He feels how great a wickedness, how great an evil it is to sin in the very sight of God, and therefore he cries: 'Against you only have I sinned, and done evil before you' (Psalm 51:4). Whence this younger son likewise cries out and exclaims: 'I have sinned against heaven and before you, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.' He does not say, 'I am not worthy to be your son,' but 'I am not worthy to be called your son'; for to be called pertains to grace, to be pertains to nature. Hear the Apostle saying: 'From him who called you into his grace' (Galatians 1). This younger son, therefore, since he had lost what belonged to nature, judges himself not to merit what belongs to grace. 'Make me as one of your hirelings.' Behold, to what has the son of his own free power come down?
The pleasure of dissipation, the freedom of youth — behold, to what has it advanced the son? 'Make me as one of your hirelings.' That his servitude be renewed by a yearly hiring, that the hired condition be worn down by unremitting labor, that all day long in his toil the home-born slave sigh over his wretched wages, that he be forever the seller of himself, and never be able to deny his servitude. And he asks this, because he who with a stranger had felt a slavish freedom believes that with his father there will be for him a free servitude. Even now, brethren, I would wish to open the mystery of this reading, did not concern for your profit call me back: for I see that you hear these things not as our own, with the sorrow that is due, but hasten, as it were, to fly past them in your understanding as though they were foreign to you.
Ours, ours, and ever profitable to us all, are the things that Christ speaks; and to correct us the Lord repeatedly employs mystical examples — he who willed to be the father of his own servants, who willed to be loved rather than feared, who gave himself as the bread of life, who poured out his own blood into the cup of salvation. By comparisons drawn from the past he corrects those of the present and of the future, lest, deserting the good father, the loving begetter, we set out for the far-off and all-too-foreign regions of the world, and there, living in dissipation, squander the whole estate of salvation and of life, and, when all is consumed, endure the most grievous famine of despair, and so be handed over at last to the chief of that region — that is, to the devil, the author of despair:
and that he may send us into his farm, that is, into the alluring valleys of this world; may send us to feed swine, namely those who, ever bent toward the earth, live like swine, and temper the heat of the flesh in the wallow of mud, press it down in the mire, and cool it in the whirlpool of vices. But that he sends his hirelings to the swine — this insatiable cruelty does, which is not content that men become criminal, unless it makes them leaders of vices and masters of crimes. When it has made them such, it does not allow them to be sated even from the swine's own food and fodder: that, hungering, they may sin the more; for satiety cannot content the dissolute, and pleasure knows not how to be filled.
Wherefore let us be with the good father, let us abide with the loving begetter, that we may both be able to avoid the snares of the devil and enjoy the father's good things unceasingly. The deeper matters we shall search out afterward, since we owe more to fellowship and to good conduct.