This essay first appeared in our weekly Scripture reflection newsletter on March 29, 2025.
It’s common these days to talk about “grievance culture,” in which everyone seems to feel aggrieved, disrespected or insulted.
Of course, there are many people who have legitimate reasons for such feelings. The way, for example, that some public figures have been trashing migrants and refugees, and transgender people, to take two obvious examples, is certainly cause for members of those groups to feel insulted. And members of ethnic minorities who have historically been the target of racism and bigotry also have the right to feel disrespected—because they have been. Such mistreatment calls for both attention and redress.
But what happens when everyone seems like they are carrying a proverbial chip on their shoulders, quick to take offense at even the most benign statements?
What happens when everyone seems like they are carrying a proverbial chip on their shoulders, quick to take offense at even the most benign statements?
Into that proverbial problem comes the Parable of the Prodigal Son, perhaps Jesus’ most famous “short story,” to quote the New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine. I won’t rehearse Luke’s beautiful narrative, which we read on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, in which a son is forgiven by his father for his grave offenses, while the older son fumes. I’m sure you know it.
Instead, I want to draw your attention to the figure of the older son. After the younger brother returns home, motivated by a desire to repent (notice that he doesn’t even have to utter a word before the father forgives him) the older brother explodes in a rage. He accuses his father of negligence. The older son has kept all the rules (though one wonders if he did so without complaint) and yet the father has never given him “even one young goat” to celebrate with his friends, while the reprobate younger son is welcomed home with the “fatted calf,” something reserved for the most important celebrations.
How many of us have read this passage and thought, “Well, he has a point, doesn’t he?” It does seem unfair, especially if we imagine the Prodigal Son, a.k.a. his little brother, being away for a long time. Imagine how hard the older brother worked during all those months, perhaps even years. I often wonder if the younger son was already the father’s favorite, which may have added coals to the fire of the elder son’s resentment. Perhaps he had to listen to his father’s laments for his beloved lost son for all that time.
We all feel aggrieved, but we tend to overlook our sins and focus only on the good things we’ve done.
So the older brother feels justified in his resentment. But here is the point: Who doesn’t feel that way? Whom among us hasn’t been treated unfairly? Who among us has not suffered unjustly? More to the point, which of us has led a perfect life, as the older son feels he has? We all feel aggrieved, but we tend to overlook our sins and focus only on the good things we’ve done. Therefore, we think, like little angels, we deserve nothing but good things. It’s the other person who deserves to be punished. Not us!
In other words, we tend to forget that we’re all sinners, just like the Prodigal Son. As Henri Nouwen observed in his book-length meditation on this parable, we feel like the older son (that is, self-righteous and resentful) and we act like the younger son (that is, sinful and selfish). But the one we are supposed to emulate is the father, who is all-forgiving and all-understanding. Remember that Jesus tells this parable to illustrate forgiveness, acceptance and welcome.
It doesn’t make sense, does it? Certainly not by the world’s standards. It makes sense only when we realize that we’re all the younger son and that none of us has any right to feel superior to anyone else. We’re all sinners or, as we Jesuits like to say, “loved sinners.” And to understand that—to understand the need that all of us have for the Father’s mercy—is to step into a new world of love and mercy and leave behind a world of resentment and jealousy.
In the reign of God, everyone is forgiven, because God knows not only that everyone deserves forgiveness, but that everyone needs it.
This is part of what St. Paul means in the Second Letter to the Corinthians when he says, “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold new things have come” (2 Cor 5:17).
The Parable of the Prodigal Son, like all of Jesus’ parables, invites us into a new way of life, one of radical equality, understanding, forgiveness, love and mercy. In the reign of God, everyone is forgiven, because God knows not only that everyone deserves forgiveness, but that everyone needs it.
