The awakening – is the mercy of God.
The temptations are the looking of God over us.
God, with our temptations, offers His Hand for our own awakening and says to us:
“I have chosen you; you were living the wrong way and because of this you went through this terrible trouble; maybe through this temptation you’ll be able to see Me, you'll be able to feel your Lord."
And when we are brought back to repentance, then we see the Lord. But let us not fall into despair,.. if we do, we will move even further away from the Lord.
Despair destroys repentance. A repentant person will never lose hope. This is the dignity of the younger son.
He says “I will rise and go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned before heaven and before thee”;
This means that the Prodigal Son confesses his sin and doesn’t even think of himself as being worthy to return to being the child, the son of his father.
He only thinks that maybe he could be received as one of the farm-laborers in the house of his father. This means that the repentant son has also gained humility and has abased himself.
His repentance is synergized with his humility, there’s not even a sign of despair. He confesses with all of his heart that he has sinned before God and before his father...
Archpriest Theodore Gignadze
(Sermon from 2004)
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