LENT IS FOR US TO FEEL FORGIVEN
This parable is for all of us who have at some time left the Father's house to embark on the fantasy of walking in the footsteps of the Prodigal Son. It wasn't just a coincidence that Christ told it to us. He did it to show us that he knew the fragile clay we are made of, that he knew our sins beforehand.  He did it to show us his mercy by forgiving us even before we offended him.
1. This parable is for the restless and the dreamers, for those who have a desire rooted deep in their soul: to be happy. A desire that God himself placed in our hearts, a desire we should not be ashamed of. A desire that we fight for until we quench that thirst for happiness which seems to consume us.
This parable is also for the misguided soul that thinks it can satisfy its thirst in the muddy waters of pleasure. For the one who eagerly hopes to hold all earthly pleasures in his hands, and yet feels them running through his fingers without satisfying his thirst, but instead leaving him parched in the arid desert of his passions. This parable is therefore for each of us who seek our happiness, expecting to find it in the passing pleasures the world offers us.
2. For a Father, the best of all is his son. For a Father, happiness is the good of his son. For a Father, the greatest sorrow is seeing his son enslaved to sin, to the vice of alcohol, of drugs, to the vice of lying, of infidelity, of hatred, of sorrow, or of vengeance... For a Father, the greatest desire is to have his son at his side, close to his breast. For a Father, his son is the whole world to him. Maybe we are nothing in the eyes of the world, but in God's eyes, we are everything.
3. it’s useless to try to hide this reality: we are all prodigal sons and daughters. We have all demanded of our Father the inheritance of our freedom. And he has given it to us. We have all taken our liberty and set off for the distant lands of sin, there to squander it and run after the shadows of a happiness that vanishes into thin air when we try to take hold of it.
This parable is for those who learn from their mistakes. For those who understand that in the house they ran away from, there waits a loving Father who is more willing to forgive than to punish. Let us not doubt, but arise and run to this Father!
Brothers and Sisters: it is better to have been like the Prodigal Son and come back repentant to the Father's house, willing to love him as he loves us, than to be like the other son in the parable who although he never went away, was always distant from his Father.