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S i d e b a r
Sinner Come Home
By Kristine Franklin
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This Rock
Volume 13, Number 2
 February 2002 
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My father and I have never discussed religion. It is a taboo subject, certain to make him angry. I don’t know what he believes about God deep down. But I do know that he was raised Catholic and that at one point he began to study for the priesthood. Illness forced him to quit school, and a few years later he stopped going to Mass. That was fifty years ago. One day, out of the blue, he sent me the following e-mail:
"Kris: I don’t agree with the Catholic Church’s practice of giving criminals like Mafia hit men a Catholic funeral. I don’t believe in this ‘confess your sins at your deathbed’ stuff. What do you say to that?"
Never in my life had my father asked me a religious question. I prayed for several hours, and then I sent him the following reply.
Dear Dad:
Once there was a man who had two sons. The elder son was hardworking, trustworthy and obedient, thankful for the good family he’d been born to. The younger son was selfish and rebellious, a troublemaker and a heartache to his parents. One day, the selfish son demanded his portion of the estate. Money in hand, he turned his back on his good father and family and walked away. "Who needs them?" he muttered, and he didn’t look back.
The rebellious son lived riotously. He spent his father’s hard-earned money on booze and harlots and fancy clothes. His lifestyle was a scandal, and it brought shame and sorrow to his father. Soon the money ran out, and the boy found himself in such desperate straits that the sight of a trough full of pig slop made his mouth water. Filthy, stinking, starving, degraded, the young man clung to one last thread of hope: "I’ll go back and beg my father to let me be a slave on his estate. Then at least I’ll have something to eat." And so he headed for home.
Back on the farm, the old man leaned on his staff and stared down the road, just as he’d done every single day since his younger son had left. "Give up, Dad," said the older boy. "Let him go," said the old man’s friends. But the old man continued to watch. That day he saw someone coming up the road. He squinted to get a better look. The person came closer, and now the old man could see who it was.
He flew out of the yard and ran down the road toward his boy. He ran so hard and so fast that he thought his heart might burst, but still he ran, and he didn’t stop until he reached his son and gathered him in his arms and covered his dirty face with kisses. The son fell to his knees in shame. "Father, I’ve been such a fool," he said.
"Yes," said the father, "but you’ll always be my boy."
When the two reached the house, the father ordered a feast to be prepared in celebration. He put a robe on the boy and his own ring on his finger. The older brother was understandably disgruntled. "I’ve been a good son all these years and you’ve never given me a party."
"Son," said the old man, "I haven’t overlooked your love and faithfulness. You know everything I have is yours. But I have to celebrate, don’t you see? My boy was lost and now he’s found. He was dead, and has been brought back to life."
Being a parent helps me understand God’s love. I look at my little girl and see my blonde hair; I see her daddy’s blue-green eyes and his sprinkling of freckles across her nose. She is mine. She is ours. Nothing she could ever do could change that fact.
It’s the same with our son. He is his dad all over, but like me he loves books, and he cries at sad movies like his dad. He is ours. He is mine. He is himself too—not a carbon copy, not a clone, not a robot—but we are stamped all over him and every time we look at him, we see that he is ours.
When God looks at you and me, he sees himself stamped all over us, and he loves us more than we can begin to know. He delights in us and wants only the best for us. He laughs when we laugh. He weeps when we suffer. He waits for us to love him back—never pushing, never demanding, always longing for any sign of response. God made us for himself, not to be robots or slaves but to be children. He made us for love—made us because of love—and he is madly in love with us. Nothing can change that, not ever.
Yet because we are not robots or pets, because God wants our response of love for him to be genuine, he gives his children free will. And so, aided by his grace within us, we choose to live as children of the King—or else we choose to live without him, with our backs turned to his love. But the choice is ours.
When we see a Mafia hit man getting a Catholic funeral, it bothers us just as it bothered the older son in the story. Sinners don’t deserve a party. They don’t deserve forgiveness, because they were really bad. We do deserve it, because we are pretty good. That’s what we think.
But it doesn’t work that way. No one deserves heaven. No one is holy enough apart from God’s grace. The Church teaches, as Christ taught, that God’s forgiveness extends to every single human being who asks for it with true repentance and sorrow for sin. That’s why a priest is called to a deathbed, just in case the dying person is truly ready to repent. And if the priest doesn’t get there in time? God knows the condition of that heart and we depend upon his mercy and love. The Church makes sure we have every possible opportunity to die in friendship with our heavenly Father.
No one on earth knows whether that Mafioso, in the last moments of his life, realizing how rotten and desperate he was, begged forgiveness and threw himself on God’s mercy. We don’t know what spark of grace was left over from his baptism, or from the hundreds of prayers said by his pious grandma, or from the catechism class that made him yawn as a kid. We may know from the evidence of his actions that he was a terrible sinner, but we don’t know the condition of his heart at the moment of death. Only God can see that. Like Christ, the Church hopes all will be saved, but it isn’t about to say who is and who isn’t. That’s God’s business.
What we do know with absolute certainly is that God loves that burly murderer as much as he loves anyone. God’s love is so big, his mercy so thorough, that he sent Jesus to die on the cross for murderers and thieves and tax evaders and child molesters and whores and drunks—and me. Our heavenly Father is deeply in love with us all, and gives us every possible chance in this life to turn to him like the little children we are.
The reason it’s hard for us to accept God’s mercy is because we can’t fathom the depths of that kind of love. It is simply beyond us. It is beyond our capability as human beings to love so unconditionally, so universally. So we project our own limitations onto God and, in doing so, we make him in our own image. We expect him to love as little as we love, to forgive only what we would forgive, and so we develop a twisted, inaccurate view of our heavenly Father.
Sometimes our view of God is so warped that we think there are sins he can’t or won’t forgive. Maybe some of our own. It doesn’t make sense to us that God would love and forgive people who seem to be so unlovable, so hardened in their sins. "I’m so bad, I’ve been gone so long, my faith is a lot smaller than any mustard seed—he’d never want me back." How easily we accept the lie! But God does want us, all of us, the best and the worst of us.
This is exactly what is revealed all through the pages of the Old Testament. It is what Jesus taught, and it is the same message the Church has been teaching for two thousand years. It is the gospel, the goodnews, and it has never changed: Sinner, come home. Your Father is waiting with open arms. His heart is overflowing with love, and tears of joy are streaming down his face.
That’s why I’m Catholic, Dad. And that’s why my heart is always full of joy.
Kristine Franklin is a popular speaker. She is co-host with Rosalind Moss of EWTN's "Household of Faith."
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