Year C – Fourth Sunday of Lent – March 10, 2013

Joshua 5:9a, 10-12; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7 (R./ 9a); 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:18; Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32

When Israel fled from Egypt, God’s chosen people began a journey into beginning a new creation – changing from a nation of slaves to a nation of free people, from under the heel of Pharaoh to an intimate covenant with God, from eating manna in the desert to feasting on the fruits of the Promised Land.  This journey took forty years and was not easy.

When the Prodigal Son finally “came to his senses,” he realized he would be better off back home as a hired worker than stealing slop from the pigs.  A journey began from being lost to being found, from “dead” to a new creation.  It did not take forty years, but how does one measure in time a journey that transforms the heart?  That path to being a new creation can take forty years, forty days, forty minutes, or forty seconds.  Sometimes it is an outer journey; it is always an inner one.  Only with God’s help is it possible.  Jesus walks with us.  Eventually we arrive at the celebration where our heavenly Father embraces us, welcoming us home.

What does it mean to you to be a “new creation”?