The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. Luke
Ver. 17. — And when he came to himself, or, as the Arabic renders it, “when he was considering within himself.” Euthymius says, “ becoming master of himself, and as it were waking up from the deep sleep of the drunken.” “ Returning from his wanderings abroad.” Theophylact. “ For,” says the Interlinear, “ he who has gone away from himself does well to return ; ” and the prodigal had been in a manner beside himself, and a raving madman, but his misery gave him understanding, and hunger taught him to be wise. So S. Gregory Nyssen. (Tract. de Oratione) writes, “ He did not return to his former state of happiness until coming to himself, he felt the full weight of his cares.” And S. Augustine (Quæst. Evang. lib. xxi.) : “He turned his thoughts (intentionem) from these things, which act externally as snares and temptations, to his inner conscience.” “For,” says S. Ambrose, “he who returns to it returns to himself, but he who departs from Christ forfeits his rights in Christ.”
How many hired servants of my father’s, &c. They have bread enough and to spare, but I, his son, am perishing with hunger. So God is wont to take away from those who live for pleasure all their delights, and send them hunger, sickness, and pain, that they may return to a better mind, and see what happiness they have forfeited, and into what misery they have fallen ; which is the first stage of repentance. Hence Titus writes, “Coming to himself, i.e. comparing his former happiness with his after misery, he thought of what he was whilst he abode with his father, and meditated over and over again on the vile and wretched state to which he had reduced himself by his rejection of God, and subjection to Satan.” Learn then from the example of the prodigal, that “repentance follows on hasty counsel, and that a bad beginning makes a bad ending;” and again, “that thou be not conquered by a shameful adversary, regard pleasure only when it is departing from thee, for pleasure is the food of the wicked.”
Mystically. If we serve God and follow virtue in hope of worldly gain, we are hirelings ; if from fear, slaves ; if from love, sons. As the Interlinear says, “How many Jews are there who keep the law only for the sake of present prosperity, and obtain of God that which they desire ; but I, who neglect God's law, prosper neither in my temporal nor my spiritual concerns.”
S. Augustine, on the other hand, says, “These are the reflections of a man who is coming to a better mind again, and finds himself amongst those who preach the truth, not from love of the truth, but from the desire of earthly gain.” But the Gloss takes higher ground : “The hirelings are they who busy themselves in walking worthily, looking for the reward which is to be. These have bread enough and to spare, i.e. they are sustained by the daily nourishment of Divine grace.”
He then who is restrained from vice by fear of punishment is the slave ; by hope and longing for the kingdom of heaven, the hireling ; of that which is good, the son. And Theophylact, in like manner, makes this threefold distinction amongst those who are saved.
The Interlinear again, and others who understand by the two sons the Jews and Gentiles, explain thus : “The Jews, who like hirelings serve God in hope of obtaining the good things of this world, possess them plentifully ; but the people of the Gentiles, together with the idolaters, are wholly cut off from the truth.”
Ver. 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 (Horn. 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 may 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. Matt. xxi. 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.” Heb. vi. 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.”