Luke 15:18

I will arise and go to my father. "I will arise," says the Interlinear, "because I perceive that I have fallen prone before idolatry and vice. I will go to my father, for I have wandered far from him, and am wearing away my life in misery and want. I will rise from this wretched life. I will break away from my vices, cease from sin, amend my life. I will repent, and humbly beg of God the pardon of my sin."

"Well does he say, 'I will arise,'" writes S. Jerome (Epist. 146), "for away from his father he could not stand upright. It is the part of sinners to lie prone, of the just to stand upright." For as Chrysologus (Serm. 1) says, "As long as a man is with his father, his state is happy, his service free, and his safety assured. He reverences his father with gladness. If corrected it is with gentleness. Though poor he is rich, and his possessions are secure." And again, "he determines to return, because he perceived that with a stranger his liberty was slavery, and because he believed that with his father his slavery would be liberty."

And will say unto him. These words, says Titus, are few, but enough for my salvation; for I know my father's loving-kindness, and that he will have compassion on the penitent, whom he did not abandon, even when wallowing in the foulness of sin.

Father, I have sinned. "This," says S. Ambrose, "is his first confession to the author of nature, the dispenser of mercy, the judge of his sin. For although God knows all things, He waits to hear the acknowledgment of our sins, because he who takes the burden of his sin upon himself lessens its weight, and he who by confession anticipates the accuser, deprives the accusation of its sting. In vain wilt thou endeavour to hide from Him, whom nothing escapes, and you may safely discover what you know to be already known."

God, therefore, justly and fitly demands of the sinner the confession of his sin.

1. Because a criminal ought to humble himself, and confess his crime, if he would be forgiven.

2. Because, according to Origen (Hom. ii on Ps. xxxviii.), as a disordered stomach must be purged by emetics, so must the soul which is full of corruption be purified by confession.

3. Because the sinner has cast contempt on the majesty of God, and can only make amends for his fault by repentance. For repentance gives glory to God, and restores to Him the honour which sin takes away. In a word, the penitent acknowledges that he himself is a sinner, but that God is most holy.

4. The confession of the sinner therefore is for the praise and glory of God the Creator, as well as of Jesus Christ our Saviour. "For," says S. Cyprian, or the author of the Treatise on the Passion, whoever he way be, "when the sinner takes upon himself the office of judge and tormentor, becoming his own prosecutor, and showing by the shame he exhibits that his confession is genuine, his entire self-sacrifice obtains pardon for him in the sight of God. For God does not pass judgment twice on the same offence."

Against heaven That is, (1.) I have sinned so grievously that my sins, as it were, cry to heaven for vengeance, or by a Hebraism, we may understand "against heaven" to mean, against God who dwelleth therein. (See S. Matthew 21:25.)

2. "Against heaven," because in preferring earth to heaven, I have committed a great wrong and have lightly esteemed heavenly things; so that if heaven were endowed with voice and reason, it would cry out and make accusation against me.

3. "Against heaven" because heaven is my home, and I am only a sojourner here on earth. I have therefore betrayed my native land. So S. Gregory Nyssen, (De Oratione), says, "He would not have confessed that he had sinned against heaven, unless he had been persuaded that heaven was his country and that he had sinned in leaving it." And S. Jerome, "He sins against heaven who leaves the heavenly Jerusalem."

4. "Against heaven," i.e. "against the angels and those that dwell therein," says the Interlinear, and also S. Augustine

5. Or "against heaven" because according to S. Ambrose, "he had wasted the gifts of heaven." By which we may understand "the endowments of the soul and the spiritual gifts which are impaired by sin and by our departure from the heavenly Jerusalem, which is the mother of us all."

Symbolically, S. Chrysostom, in the Catena, says, "He sins against heaven who sins against the humanity of Christ, which although above us as heaven, is yet visible." For the sinner makes of none effect the blood of Christ, and in a manner "crucifies the Son of God afresh." Hebrews 6:6.

And before Thee. "Who alone," says S. Chrysostom, "seest all things, and to whom the thoughts of all hearts are revealed. Great then is the shamelessness of the sinner in daring to sin before the living God, who will punish him for his offences in the day of judgment, and who not unfrequently inflicts punishment in this life as a warning to others not to offend."

S. Jerome here explains that "he had sinned against his father in that, forsaking his Creator, he had bowed down in worship to idols of wood and of stone."

Symbolically, S Augustine (Quæst. Evang. lib. ii... 33) interprets the words "before thee" to mean "in the inmost conscience." For the sinner ought to blush even for the sins which he commits in secret, and for the conscience which he defiles, renders dumb, and hands over to Satan.