Today's gospel presents us with several parables - the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son - to help us understand God's concern for, and forgiving love, of the sinful person. Jesus is the good shepherd, who searches for the wandering sheep as long as he or she lives. He is the woman who sets everything aside to scour her home to find the one lost coin. Jesus, and His Father, never gives up on us. Until the moment of our death He will be seeking to bring us back to His loving embrace.

The famous parable of the prodigal son shows us what happens when the errant sheep, or the lost coin, is found. In our day, perhaps the most famous discussion of this parable is the late Henri Nouwen's The Prodigal Son, based on Rembrandt's famous painting. Nouwen makes clear, in the last book he wrote before his early death, that each of us, in one way or another, is the prodigal son.

Who is really "prodigal" in this parable? In an obvious sense, it is the wayward younger son. But at a deeper level is it not the father? He is prodigal, not in wasting His inheritance but in His "wasteful" love! He never gives up on us, even when He has good reason to. How grateful we should be to have such a Prodigal Father, and the Prodigal Son whom He sent to die for us!