“May the good God grant us the wisdom that leads us back to Christ, and help us use the time of Great Lent with discernment, so that the feast of Pascha may truly become, for each of us, a return to the boundless love of our Heavenly Father,” said Patriarchal Auxiliary Bishop Varlaam of Ploiești on Sunday.
Explaining the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the hierarch underlined that its reading before the beginning of the fast reminds us that all of us are, in a sense, prodigal children.
“The time of fasting is the time when we are called to restore this bond of love with God the Father, to ask forgiveness, to weep for our sins and, with boldness, to come back to God, because He, like the Father in today’s Gospel, runs to meet us when we take a single step toward Him,” the bishop said in his sermon delivered at Zlătari Church in Bucharest.
Love, inseparably linked with freedom
The patriarchal auxiliary bishop also spoke about the inseparable link between love and freedom.
“Today’s Gospel shows us how highly God values the freedom of the human person whom He created. Among the gifts that form what we call the image of God in man—reason, affection, spiritual powers and bodily energy—there is also this freedom of the human person,” he said.
“Human freedom is respected by God without limit, even to the point that man, in freedom, crucified the Son of God, who came into the world to save it from the bondage of death, hell and the devil.”
Sin as a distortion of human nature
The hierarch further explained the unnatural state brought about by sin, which is a distancing from God in order to follow one’s own passionate desires.
“To come to one’s senses means to return to what is normal. When God created man, He made him immortal, adorned him with His image and set as the goal of human life the attainment of likeness to God,” Bishop Varlaam said.
“This is the natural state of humanity: to be a child of God, created in His image and called to grow into His likeness. Therefore, Adam’s sin of disobedience is unnatural, and its consequence—death—is also unnatural.”
A call to return during Great Lent
The bishop emphasised that the father in the parable—who represents God the Father—remains in a permanent state of loving expectation toward humanity, symbolised by the fatted calf prepared in advance for the joyful feast.
“Beloved faithful, we live in a world in which we, too, even as members of the Church, often lose our way,” the patriarchal auxiliary bishop warned.
“As we draw near to the Holy and Great Fast of Easter, today’s Gospel shows us how essential repentance is—our return to the Heavenly Father, whom we have abandoned whenever we commit sin, because sin is the wall that separates man from God.”
Photo: Lumina Newspaper / Luigi Ivanciu
