Luke 15:14 — Community Reflections

LUKE 15:14 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.”

After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that country, and he began to be in need — after he had spent everything: the sequence is complete — the inheritance exhausted. A severe famine adds external pressure to personal depletion. He began to be in need (hystereisthai, to lack, to fall behind): the first experience of genuine deprivation.

Church Fathers on Luke 15:14

St. Luke has given three parables successively; the sheep which was lost and found, the piece of silver which was lost and found, the son who was dead and came to life again, in order that invited by a threefold remedy, we might heal our wounds. Christ as the Shepherd bears you on His own body, the Church as the woman seeks for thee, God as the Father receives you, the first, pity, the second, intercession, the third, reconciliation.
Ambrose · 4th century

There is also in the above-mentioned parable a rule of distinction with reference to the characters or dispositions of the sinners. The father receives his penitent son, exercising the freedom of his will, so as to know from whence he had fallen; and the shepherd seeks for the sheep that wanders and knows not how to return, and carries it on his shoulders, comparing to an irrational animal the foolish man, who, taken by another’s guile, had wandered like a sheep. This parable…
Chrysostom · 4th century

But some say that by the elder son is signified Israel according to the flesh, but by the other who left his father, the multitude of the Gentiles.
Cyril of Alexandria · 5th century

Read all 26 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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