Lessons in Mercy from the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother

This year the Gospel reading for Laetare Sunday included the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), an appropriate choice as we paused to break the somber tone of Lent and rejoice. The return of the Prodigal Son is a time of great rejoicing, for the son who was once lost is now found.

Why Did Jesus Include the Older Brother?

This parable is probably one of the most cited and most studied in all of Scripture and it fits well with this Year of Mercy. It is certainly apt to contemplate the abundant mercy the father shows his wayward son. But have you ever wondered why Jesus included the character of the older brother? The scenario of the merciful father and the repentant son effectively models our relationship with God the Father. We are sinners; yet God welcomes us with open arms when we see the error of our ways and humbly ask His forgiveness for our sins. What does Christ want us to learn from this third character of the parable?

Perhaps because I am an oldest child, I have always felt a kinship with this older brother who strode the straight and narrow path and always worked to please his father. As any oldest child will tell you, Mom and Dad are never as hard on the youngest as they were on the oldest. I completely understand the older brother’s frustration. Where are the consequences? Where is the justice?

Yet I doubt Jesus was trying to highlight the penalties of being the first-born. The simple lesson is that virtuous living kept the older son close to the father and that itself was a reward. Often the person who consistently seeks to be close to God through prayer, regular Mass attendance and simple love of neighbor remains anonymous, while the person who undergoes a radical conversion is treated like a celebrity. Still, if you ask the convert, he rues the time he spent in sin and error and would gladly forego the celebration if he could recover the time he lost.

The Elder Brother’s Pride

A more complex consideration is that the older brother serves as a warning against self-righteousness rooted in pride. He is understandably offended by the pain the younger brother’s selfish and irresponsible behavior inflicted on their father. But he is consumed by anger when he sees his sibling being welcomed with love instead of being condemned.

The older brother’s pride highlights the disparity between his own virtue and his brother’s vices. Yet this same pride blinds him to the hardness of his own heart. The love and forgiveness he is withholding from his brother causes his father as much pain as did his brother’s reckless living.

Christ never shunned the sinner. He dined with them. He embraced them. He forgave them. He loved them. He expects the same of us. When he taught his disciples to pray, he instructed them to forgive those who sin against them just as they ask the Father to forgive their own sins. But forgiveness is hard. It requires both grace and humility.

We glibly declare that we need to love the sinner and hate the sin but when the sinner repents and asks for our forgiveness we all too often point our fingers in judgment and demand retribution. When we withhold mercy, we sin against our Heavenly Father, just as the older brother sinned against his own father when he refused to forgive his brother. If we truly believe that no one is beyond redemption, then who are we to refuse our brother the opportunity for reconciliation?

Refusing to Enter the Banquet

Returning to the parable, Jesus shows us what happens to those who refuse to forgive. The image of a banquet is often used as a metaphor for Heaven. When we see the older brother he is outside the banquet. The father reaches out to him and pleads for him to enter and join the celebration. He refuses. He is excluded from the banquet, not by the father, but by his own unwillingness to find joy in his brother’s redemption.

While it may be more comfortable to see ourselves as the older brother, paragons of virtue able to discern the sins of those around us, it is important to remember that the older brother was virtuous only in the eyes of the world. His soul was actually severely wounded by pride leaving him bitter and unhappy. It was the younger brother who found true virtue and holiness because he humbled himself before his father, admitted his sins and pleaded for forgiveness. He was the one who enjoyed the father’s banquet.

The parable of the prodigal son serves as a message of great hope for the infinite availability of God’s great mercy if we but repent and ask forgiveness. It also serves as a dire warning of the grave consequences for refusing to extend our own meager mercy to our neighbor. We can exclude ourselves from the banquet of Heaven with our refusal to forgive.

We now find ourselves basking in the glow of the Easter season for Christ has redeemed us. Salvation is now possible because of the remarkable gift of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection. Reflecting on the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son should prompt us to do more than just drink from the font of Divine Mercy and seek forgiveness for our own sins. We must also serve as a conduit of this mercy by joyfully welcoming the repentance of sinners and freely offering love and forgiveness to all those willing to accept it.