As a Church like Notre Dame is considered the Church of churches and The Crysler building is the sky scrapers of sky scrapers, so is the Prodigal Son the Parable of the Parables. Some have even called it the Gospel in the Gospels.
This gospel gives the hint at why God choose to create and give himself. Many levels to this gospel. Two sons, its an image of Isreal and the Gentiles or the Sinners and the Faithful. Both always need the mercy of God. God is of course the Father who is good and merciful in how he loves his children. This gospel story transforms our relationship with God, it speaks as much to each of us individuals as to entire nations.
Oldest child had a right to the double portion of inheritance and thus the other son gets 1/3. He asks for inheritance, and spiritual meaning a spiritual death. The level of his degradation was so low that even personally he was tempted to eat what the pigs eat.
We then will have the various interpretations of the younger brothers sin and then how we as well interpret our sins. The son sees himself as having lost his identity. As the son confesses, the father brings out rings, cloats, and a feast: God is able to bring out treasures from our repentance, from our weakness he can draw strength. But if we don’t offer that, God can’t pull it out. So much of the work is not on our end, it is on God’s end. The Father was looking for him, waiting for him. He had to let himself be found. The father sees the act of his sin as a passive reality: “he was dead, he was lost and been found”, it is the father doing the work. The issue is that the younger son must allow himself to be found.
We then move to the outsider view. People will see sins of others as someone straying, someone missing the mark, a performance. They only look at the external.
Enter the older brother:
The real issue arises: was the older son the true lost son? He was the one most oblivious to the need of mercy. He thought he was good. Jesus came not just to make us good people. He refused to ever call the prodigal his brother. He only calls him “This son of yours”. He pushes off any relation not only with sinners but with the aspect of us that wants to identify as a sinner. We are both sons at times but many times we are the older brother. The meeting of the father happens every day in the confessional. St. Paul calls and commands us to be reconciled with God. He speaks this message to an already Christian community. Reconciliation is not a one and done. We need to go to confession regularly.
Story of Father finding his daughter who has tried to kill herself and he sat there and cleaned her wounds. Perfect image of the father.