Pope reflects on the Prodigal Son
March 15, 2010
At his Angelus audience on Sunday, March 14, Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the day's Gospel reading, which was the parable of the Prodigal Son. This parable, the Pope said, "represents an all-time literary and spiritual high point."
The Holy Father spoke about how each person's relationship with God develops in stages, starting with a childish "need and dependency" and gradually maturing. At a point, he said, an individual may wish "to free himself from the submission" of a child, and that impulse sometimes leads people to "conceal a need to discover the true face of God." But the Father is always forgiving, and the final maturing of the relationship comes when the repentant sinner realizes that God's is a "gratuitous love that is greater than our own abjection."
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