Redeeming the Prodigal Son

           When I first went to college back in the early fifties, I was certainly not mature enough to understand what I or it was all about.  I easily got caught up in the fraternity party ethos on the campus with their weekend beer parties, and hardly paid any attention at all to the courses that I was supposed to be taking. 

            The college put up with that for a while, but eventually one of the advisors called me in and suggested to me that because of my terrible grades, college was obviously not for me and wondered if I shouldn’t consider a “trade school” or something.  In other words, the college wasn’t interested in me anymore since I obviously wasn’t interested in learning any of the things that they were offering.

            I remember my father coming to the campus to try to reason with the people in charge, but in the end, what they wanted prevailed and I was sent home.  I lazed around for a while, unsure of what to do next.  I had no schedule, no job, nothing to occupy my time.

            There was a profound moment that I’ll never forget.  My father was cooking breakfast one Saturday morning and he called me into the kitchen.  “Well, what are you going to do?” he asked.  I said that I would try to find a job and see what happened.  “Good, good,” he said.  “But where are you going to live?”  The bottom fell out of my world with those words.  All of a sudden I understood that I was going to have to take care of myself.  In my immaturity, this was a new thought for me.  What was I going to do, indeed!

             My dad arranged for me to take a course in radio broadcasting that had been started by an old friend of his.  I took the course, and found a job working in a men’s shop part time while I was learning about broadcasting.  I enjoyed the course, did well in it and eventually I found a job at a radio station in Indiana, PA.  This began a career in broadcasting for me which lasted about twenty years.  But that defining moment with my father never left me.  It was the moment that I grew up. 

            When I read the story of the prodigal son, I always think of myself and that Saturday moment with my father.  He really knew what I needed, even if I didn’t.  I have thanked God for that defining time over and over again.  It was really a gift that I needed more than anything else. 

            My dad never lived to see what happened to me; how well I did in my radio and television career and then was led to go back to college and then to seminary and into the priesthood.  I can’t imagine a better life than the one that I have had, but it certainly began on that Saturday morning when I came to understand my responsibility for my own life.  My father gave me that wonderful gift, just as the father of the prodigal son gave him back the life that he had squandered