Luke 15:29

And he answering said, Lo, these many years do I serve thee. The Syriac has "servio tibi servitutem," so the Jews were in bondage to the observance of the law.

Neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment. This answer shows the lying arrogance and the ingratitude of the Jews, who boasted of their work done under the law, and forgot the many benefits which God had conferred upon them. They lie when they say they have never transgressed the commandment of God. They transgress often! For, says St. Jerome (Ep. 146), "Is it not a transgression to envy our brother his salvation?" With like arrogancy, the Pharisee justifies himself, and despises the Publican. St. Luke xviii. II. But as St. Augustine and the Interlinear point out, the Jews did not bow down to idols, as the Gentiles did, and therefore, inasmuch as they worshipped the one true God, and Him alone, in this particular they did not transgress the commandment.

And yet thou never gavest me a kid. The fathers explain this symbolically in many ways.

"No blood of prophet or priest has delivered us from the Roman yoke, but for the prodigal, i.e., for the Gentiles, for sinners, throughout the whole world, Thy precious blood was shed." St. Jerome (Ep. 146), "Thou hast never, for my sake, ordered a kid, i.e. a sinner who persecuted me, to be slain." Theophylact.

"Thou, 0 Christ, hast never given me Thyself for my food, because I accounted Thee as a kid, i.e., as a sinner, and a perverter of the Law." St. Augustine.

"The Jews demand a kid: the Christians a lamb. For them Barabbas is set free; for us the lamb is slain." St. Ambrose.