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Bishop's Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

March 30, 2025

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Homily of the Most Reverend Larry Silva, Bishop of Honolulu
[St. Anthony of Padua Church, Kailua; St. John the Apostle and Evangelist Church, Mililani]

What’s for dinner?

That may very well be a question that you are already asking yourself right now.  Here, of course, we have so many choices.  But for the Israelites in the desert, the answer was usually “quail and manna;” or sometimes “manna and quail.”  In their complaints that they would rather be slaves in Egypt, with a variety of foods, than die of hunger in the desert, God took care of them with a steady diet of manna and quail.  But today we hear that they have reached the Promised Land, and now they are eating from the produce of this rich land, flowing with milk and honey.  The manna ceased, and I would bet they never thought of eating quail again for decades!

We see in the Gospel another young man who is very hungry.  This time, it was because of very poor decisions he had made, squandering his money on dissolute living.  And, it was really not his money, but his father’s money.  We might not think of the full impact of what this young man did to his father.  Usually, one does not receive an inheritance until the parents are dead.  But he wanted it now, which was the equivalent of saying, “Drop dead, Dad!  I don’t care about you.  I want your money.”  How deeply hurtful this must have been to the father.  We could well understand how such a father could bear a life-long grudge against this terrible son.  The young man’s older brother certainly did just that!

But instead, the father hungered most of all for the return of his beloved son.  We might imagine that the father lost much weight, refusing to eat, because he was so distraught about his separation from his son.  The calf got fatter and fatter, in hopes that one day the son would return, while the father became thinner and thinner.  Then, of course, we see the most amazing thing.  The son is so hungry, so tired of stealing scraps from the feeding of the pigs, that he repents of his stupidity and selfishness and returns to his father.  He is hoping to just be a hired hand, so that at least he will have enough to eat.  But, as we see, the father threw all resentment to the wind when he saw his son approaching and treated him like a king returning from a successful battle.

This is how much God hungers for us to return to him, to turn away from sin and believe in the Good News of his love.  While we were still sinners, God sent us his only begotten Son to become the food for the banquet that greets us sinners upon our return.  God feeds us with the Bread of Life and the Cup of Eternal Salvation, the very Body and Blood of his Son.  God, like the father in the Gospel, rushes out to embrace us, so happy is he to see us when we return to him.

During this time of Lent, we reflect deeply upon our own sinfulness.  We scrutinize ourselves, even as our Elect who are preparing for the Easter sacraments do so as they celebrate the Scrutinies. We confess our sins, as did the young man, and we open ourselves to the embrace of our loving Father, who always rejoices with the angels of heaven over even one repentant sinner.

And so, it is important for us to reflect upon what we hunger for.  We might be like this young man who hungered for independence, for excitement, for wealth and for power.  But these things in the end make us only hungrier, deeply dissatisfied with life.  We hear so often of celebrities who seem to have so much in terms of wealth, fame, and power, yet who feel the need to anesthetize themselves with drugs or to end life all together.  If they instead hungered for God and putting their talents at the service of God, they would have their fill of the finest food possible, the food of God’s love.

Yes, sometimes God’s love is as routine as manna and quail day after day, year after year.  Yet sometimes it is as elegant as the fattened calf, with singing, dancing, and music.  The challenge is to attune our hungers to what will really satisfy, what will bring us the most lasting happiness.  And most of all, it is to remember that God hungers for us, as much as the father hungered for the return of his wayward son.