The older brother in the parable of the prodigal son voices a common frustration: “The unfairness of somebody else getting what we think they don’t deserve,” says Stephen Tully, pastor of All Saints Catholic Church in Ballito, an affluent coastal town just north of Durban, South Africa, and chairman of the Napier Centre 4 Healing. Loyal and hardworking, the older brother feels overlooked when his father celebrates the younger son’s return with a lavish feast—a welcome he’s never received. “I think his pain and shame is that he’s done everything right. So why don’t I get more?” Stephen reflects. “Maybe the father never thought of doing a fatted calf for him because he was just so everyday happy with him.”
On this week’s “Preach,” for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year C (Laetare Sunday), host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., is joined by Stephen, whose years of ministry among marginalized communities have shaped his reading and preaching of the parable—and even led him to question the younger brother’s motivations for leaving home. Could family dynamics and trauma have played a role in his departure? “For all we know, the prodigal son may have run away because the older brother was so arrogant, a horrible person to be with,” says Stephen. “You can go back to the older brother, but if he’s the toxic person that made you run away, stuff’s got to be done.”
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Scripture readings for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year C
First Reading: Josh 5:9a, 10-12
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7
Second Reading: 2 Cor 5:17-21
Gospel: Lk 15:1-3, 11-32
You can find the full text of the readings here.
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year C, by Rev. Stephen Tully
Have you ever really understood what it was like to be a sinful man filled with shame? Let’s read from our Gospel, Luke 15:20. Now picture yourself in the scene. So he left the place and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father saw him, was moved with pity, he ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms, and kissed him tenderly. (Luke 15:20.)
We could be this son or daughter where we have taken something and misused it—a kindness, maybe an inheritance like this man, and realize that, damn, I’ve really sinned. I need to get on my knees and go back, grovel. But this whole sense of the father is just so amazing, and I wonder if we can try and feel it, not just understand it, because the father sees him from a long way off, so it means that the father was always looking. He’s moved with pity.
And imagine an old man running towards the boy. It’s normally the other way around. But here we have this, in my imagination, an old man with a heavy heart because the son has disappeared, he doesn’t know where he is, he sees him from a distance, he runs, he clasps him in his arm. So this is a loving embrace. So this is like a tight hold, not aggressive, but it’s like you can feel it. And then he kisses him tenderly. It’s almost like two different emotions going on there.
And this is just coming from a huge heart. And I wonder if this is something that we need to really focus on in our lives, that no matter what we’ve done in this world that makes us ashamed or makes us feel as if we are unworthy, there’s always a father, God, looking somewhere, even if we think he’s far away. And he’s moved with pity because he can see our craziness and our dilemma and our hurtful situation, and he runs to us, clasping and kissing gently. I think that’s such an important moment for us to hold.
But of course, there’s a contrast. We have Luke 15:30, isn’t that great? Luke 15:20, and then 10 verses later, we have the craziness of the big brother. And big brother is like not really happy with what’s going on. And then the father comes and tries to reconcile the big brother, he says, But for this son of yours, this is verse 30, when he comes back after soiling up your property, he and his woman, you kill the calf we have been fattening. So we have this whole situation with the older brother saying, but how can you do this? How can you go running after this boy clasping him and kissing, I mean, know all the other things about the celebration, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But we have this other element where they say, but you shouldn’t be doing this. And I think, you know, for many of us, when we know we’ve done wrong and we grapple with coming back and having experience with the father, which is unique and deeply personal, there are always going to be others who don’t accept us, that we were never able to explain. And I think this is so often, you know, in the work that I do at the Napier Centre, so often these guys are going from zero on the streets. And we say, you go from zero to hero, not because of the people around you, but because God has given you an opportunity to rethink your lives and move on. So the firs
