Who Am I? The Prodigal Son and Emotional Healing

Who am I? And who are you? Who are we as a community?

I’m sure all of us, at some point in our lives, have had the opportunity—if not once, then many times throughout the seasons of our lives—to look in the mirror and ask this question: Who am I?

It’s an important question, but it’s also potentially a dangerous question. If we’re not properly supported in the exploration and discovery of who we are and who God has created us to be, that question can cause all sorts of crisis, disruption, and chaos in our lives.

We see an example of this in the story that is central to this third Sunday of Great Lent: the story of the prodigal son. There were two sons who were raised under the auspices of their father. One of them knew very well who he was. He was confident and sure that he was where he belonged, in his father’s house, and he knew everything that he was supposed to do. He had no doubt in his mind about exactly who he was and what his life’s purpose was to be.

But there was another son who didn’t know. He didn’t know who he was, and this was the cause of so much turmoil in his life. Like so many others before and after him—and maybe some of the people in this room—the search for his identity became a reason for him to enter into the world and encounter all sorts of things that caused temptation and disruption in his life. Sinfulness raised its ugly head, and he forgot everything in which he had been raised. Without understanding who he was, he was instead formed by the whims of the world. Whatever wind would blow, he would find himself caught up in it. Whether it was the love of money, the pursuit of vanity, or whatever seemed popular or right, he would find himself caught up in it because he did not know who he was. He let the world define that for him.

Ultimately, this was the source of his ruin. It brought him to the most humbled and inglorious of states, as he found himself in the most reviled of circumstances. He was feeding pigs in the mud, which, particularly for a Jewish reader, would be the lowest of the low that a person could be.

Why did he end up there? Because he was trying to understand who he was, and he couldn’t find that answer in the place where he belonged: in his home.

The parable of the prodigal son is, of course, given to us as an example for our own lives. Just as I have, just as you have, and just as others you know may now or in the future look in the mirror and ask, “Who am I?” we need to look to the prodigal son as an example of how to find that answer in a healthy way.

This month, we are talking about emotional healing. The wounds and scars caused by a life of sin, to which we are subjected when we don’t know the answer to that question, will cause emotional damage in our lives. We need to find healing, and we can find that healing by following the example of the prodigal son.

Here are the steps he followed to understand better who he was and how to be healed emotionally.

The first thing he did was acknowledge the fallen state he was in. He understood how his own choices had led him to the circumstances in which he found himself. He took responsibility for his condition at that time. He assessed exactly what was happening and said, “This isn’t right for me. I want to change.”

At any given time in our lives, we can make that choice. It is so hard for us to look at other people who need to make that choice and say, “Why can’t they make that choice?” Whether we know somebody suffering from addiction or someone going through something very difficult in a relationship, from the outside it is so easy to see: “They just need to recognize what they’re doing wrong and make a change.”

But when it comes to ourselves, and it is time for us to make that clear-eyed assessment of what we are doing wrong and how our own lives need to change, this is something herculean. It is miraculous if it can be achieved on our own behalf. This is what the prodigal son did, and this is what people who achieve real change in their lives are able to do.

The second thing he did was seek wise guidance. He said, “I need to return home to my father. That is a place where I will be received, and it is the place where I will be helped in a way that I can trust. The world has failed me. The world is not to be trusted, because I followed that path and it led me to ruin. But in my father’s home, I can find something I can trust.”

Third, he embraced humility. He recognized his own shortcomings and sought forgiveness. When the prodigal son returned, he went only to humble himself before his father so that he might be accepted. He thought, “If only he accepts me, he will give me the lowliest job he has in his household. At least I won’t have to live the worst of lives. He will give me the least he has to offer, which is better than how I am living now.” That was the humility in his heart that brought him to his father to seek forgiveness.

He reconnected with his father on a deeper level when his father embraced him. Instead of simply tolerating his presence, the father expressed his true, deep, and eternal love for his beloved son. He embraced him despite everything the son had done to hurt him by rejecting the life with which he had graced him.

The son practiced self-forgiveness. It is easy to imagine that, from that point forward, the prodigal son would live a life full of shame and regret for what he had done, even after being embraced by his father and restored to his former glory as a beloved son. In the face of such ignominy, it would be easy to imagine shame ruling the rest of his days.

However, this is not the case for the prodigal son. He receives his father’s love, and it restores and heals him. So too in our own lives, as we go through this process, we have to be willing to put away the lawlessness of our past so that we can embrace the light of the knowledge of God.

When we go through baptism, this is what we proclaim: we have put away lawlessness, and we have put on the new clothes of the Christian life. As Christ says in the Gospel, if new wine is put into an old wineskin, it will burst. Instead, you put new wine into a new wineskin. You put the love of God into the renewed life you are living—the healed life you are living.

Through this process, the prodigal son achieved a fullness of healing to which we all have access in our lives. When we ask, “Who are we?” we turn to a trusted source. That source is the Gospel. That source is the teaching of the Holy Church. We seek guidance from those we trust in the life of the Church.

We approach our Savior with humility in our hearts and with a willingness, through repentance, to accept responsibility for all the mistakes we have made, believing that if we sincerely desire to change, he will help us do so.

We connect with God on a deeper spiritual level through the sacramental life of the Church, by taking part in the Eucharist and by being deeply engaged with the body of Jesus Christ through his Church.

As we move forward, we do not let the shame of our past define our future. Instead, we take one step at a time, knowing that Christ is walking with us toward the glory of his holy kingdom. Amen.