Eugene’s focus, in fact, is not on sin but on the Saviour. Ina retreat meditation of three years’ earlier, before his ordination, he wrote a beautiful text on himself as the prodigal son, basking the Father’s embrace and loving forgiveness. His whole Good Friday experience is mirrored in these words, and it clearly was present in the 1814 retreat we are currently exploring:
Meditation on the prodigal son. To my shame, this parable never applied to anyone better than it does me.
I left the house of my father, after having, even while I still lived there, heaped up every sort of bitterness on my father. I wasted my patrimony, if not with the daughters of Babylon, as the Lord, with inconceivable goodness, has always preserved me from that kind of stain, at least it was in the tents of sinners that I made my dwelling on my exit from the house of my father.
I wandered eventually through arid deserts; and, reduced to beggary, I ate and fed myself on the food destined for the pigs, whose company I had freely chosen. Did the thought even occur to me of going back to my father, this good father whose excessive tenderness I had so often put to the test? No, he had to come to me himself, thus crowning his gifts, to lift me up, and rescue me all heedless as I was, or rather he had to come and get me out of the mire in which I was immersed and from which I could not extract myself unaided. I hardly ever even conceived the wish to leave aside my rags and put on again my nuptial robe.
O blindness! Forever blessed, O my God, be the sweet violence that in the end you did to me! Without this masterstroke, I would still be wallowing in my sewer or perhaps have perished there; and in that case, what would have become of my soul? O my God, don’t I have every reason to devote myself entirely to your service, to offer you my life and all that I am, so that all that is in me may be employed and spent for your glory?
For by how many titles do I belong to you? Not only are you my Creator and Redeemer, as you are all men’s, but you are my special benefactor and applied your merits in an altogether special way to me; my generous friend, you forgot all my acts of ingratitude to help me as powerfully as if I had been always faithful to you; my tender father, who carried this rebel on your shoulders, warmed him against your heart, washed his wounds, etc.
Good God, merciful Saviour, a thousand lives employed in your service, sacrificed to your glory, would be the least compensation your justice would be entitled to demand of me. May the desire to make up for my impotence to render you what I acknowledge I owe you, etc.
Retreat notes before his ordination, December 1811, O.W. XIV n.95
I came here this morning because in today’s gospel we hear the story of the prodigal son, which is no longer so much about the son as it is about the Father’s love. I am sure that is how it has been preached for most of my life and yet it is only now that I begin to realise what it is truly about. I want to shout because finally I just might be starting to ‘get it’. It is not so much about the son (or in my experience) about me, as it is about the infinite loving mercy of the Father, of God.
Not once but a hundred (thousand?) times over I come running back to God after having turned away, not on the ‘big things’ (although there certainly was that) but on the ordinary everyday things of life. I think of the many gifts God has given to me, my experiences of him and his love. I think of the times that I have refused to share the very forgiveness that He has lavished upon me with another that I am struggling with, perhaps that person is struggling with the very thing(s) I am in my life. And still he continues to forgive.
It was/is not always of my own accord that I ‘run back to the Father’ (although there have been a few times that I have sought him out – no doubt only after having been inspired and led by the Holy Spirit to do so), it seems mostly to be God doing the initiating, the Father running out to find me, to gather me in. His tender mercy, his ultimate forgiveness with absolutely no strings, save to hear sin no more.
O God I am not worthy, except that in your tenderness you have made me so. That very cross on which you hung has made it so. And yet I ask over and over again to be forgiven, to be embraced and held next to your heart; and when even that will not suffice to ask for more, to ask for a small piece of your heart; and even then for more, that I might share your heart and that we be one.
It would seem Lord that the more you love me, the more I notice my humanness, my weaknesses, my times (discreet as they are) of turning away. And loving Father that you are you take them and heal me, make me clean. I still within your embrace and my soul sings as did the psalmist; “Have mercy on me, God in accordance with your merciful love; in your abundant compassion blot out my transgressions.” And even as I ask you give and again my soul sings and dances before you as my being shouts joyfully to you Lord. I have checked and this too is one of your psalms and I repeat it now.
Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.
Serve the Lord with gladness;
Come before Him with joyful singing.
Know that the Lord is God;
It is He who has made us, we belong to him,
We are His people, the flock he shepherds.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving
And His courts with praise.
Give thanks to Him, bless His name.
For the Lord is good;
His mercy endures forever,
And His faithfulness to all generations.