Rejoicing over the return and salvation of the younger son, we now mournfully unfold and lament the envy of the elder, who by the utmost zeal of malice and spite destroyed the highest good of frugality. 'His elder son,' it says, 'was in the field; and when he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing, and he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he answered him: Thy brother is come, and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe. And he was angry, and would not go in.' 'His elder son was in the field.' He was in the field tilling the earth, deserting himself: he breaks the hardness of the clod, but hardens the affection of his heart; he uproots the thorns and weeds, but plucks not out the goads of envy.
Thus in the field of covetousness he gathers the fruit of zeal and spite. 'And when he came,' it says, 'and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.' The music of tenderness puts the envious to flight, the dance of charity shuts him out; and him whom the reason of nature calls to come to his brother and to draw near to the house, envy suffers not to arrive, spite endures not to enter in. Envy is an ancient evil, the first stain, the old poison, the venom of the ages, the cause of death. This in the beginning cast the very angel out and hurled him down from heaven. This shut out man, the prince of our race, from paradise. This very same excluded this elder brother from the father's house. This armed the offspring of Abraham, the people of holiness, unto the slaughter of their own Author, unto the death of their own Saviour.
Envy is an inward enemy: it batters not the walls of the flesh, it crushes not the enclosures of the members, but rams against the very citadel of the heart; and before the inward parts feel it, the animated robber seizes the very mistress of the body and leads her captive within. If therefore we wish to merit heavenly glory, if to possess the beatitude of paradise, if to dwell in the house of the eternal Father, if we wish not to be held guilty of a heavenly parricide, let us with vigilant faith and the light of the spirit drive away the foul snares of envy and shut them out; let us with all the might of heavenly arms repress envy: for as charity joins us to God, so envy severs us from God. 'His father therefore, going out, began to entreat him.'
The father's anxious heart is straitened by the diverse emotions of his sons, and amid the varied fortunes of his dear ones the amazed tenderness of the parent runs to and fro; for he sees one brother soon put to flight by the return of the other, and one soon perishing to him by the salvation of the other, and his long grief, balanced by a brief joy, thrown into turmoil by the spite of envy. O swelling of zeal, the spacious house holds not two brothers! And what wonder, brethren? Envy brought it about, envy brought it about, that the whole breadth of the world was too narrow for two brothers; for it very envy raised up Cain unto the death of his younger brother (Genesis 4), that the spite of zeal might make him alone whom the law of nature had made the firstborn. 'And he answering, said to his father: Father, behold, so many years do I serve thee.' Thus does he think who dares to judge his father's tenderness.
'Behold, so many years do I serve thee.' See, with what servitude the son requites his father for the benefits of his birth! 'I never transgressed thy commandment.' This your own innocence did not give you, but your father's pardon; for out of much charity he chose rather to cover his son's faults than to expose them. 'And thou hast never given me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends.' A soul envious of a brother cannot be grateful to a father; and he is not mindful of a father's bounty who is unmindful of a brother's love. He denies that a kid was given him, who received the whole portion of the substance at the time of the division. For then, when the younger brother asked that a portion of the substance be given him, the father at once divided to both brothers the whole; as the evangelist says: 'And he divided unto them his substance.' But the envious man ever dissembles;
the envious man ever lies. 'And thou hast never given me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends.' He does not reckon his father's friends to be his own: these he believes to be not friends but strangers, because he saw himself loved by them for his father's favour's sake. 'But after that this thy son came, who hath devoured his substance with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.' This man grieves that the brother has returned, he grieves not that the substance has perished; the cause sought is not loss but spite. He who ought to have adorned his returning brother from his own goods, ought not thus to defile him with what was lost. In the son is the whole substance of the father; and therefore the father lost nothing when he received back the son. The brother believed it a loss, who beholds his co-heir returned.
And when is the envious man not covetous, when he reckons whatever another has as lost to himself? But the father said to him: 'Son, thou art always with me, and all that I have is thine; but it was fitting to make merry and to rejoice, for this thy brother was dead, and is come to life again; he was lost, and is found.' O what does the power of love do! However bad the son may be, the father knows not how not to be, cannot but be, a father; he sees the son degenerate in soul, he sees him retain nothing of the father's tenderness, nothing of the father's stock, and yet he calls him son; he urges him to affection, he recalls him to grace and to the hope of bounty, saying: 'Thou art always with me, and all that I have is thine.' This is to say: Allow that the son has returned to the father, permit that the father has received back the son;
nor did he seek anything other than a father, who upon coming wished to be placed not in the rank of a son but of a hired servant, saying: 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and I am no longer worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.' Let all things be thine, the father suffices for him; and lest you should think anything of your present or ancient goods diminished, for him I will seek things new and to come. Surely, if you follow the father's counsel and precept, share the present things with your brother, that with him the things to come may be common to you. Rejoice therefore, and rejoice that he is found, that he too may rejoice that you have not perished. But now let us conclude the historical discourse, that afterward we may unfold, with Christ revealing it, the things that are mystical and profound.