So how’s the whole Lent thing working out for you? Keeping all those Lenten resolutions? Yeah, same here. Out of four, I’ve kept one and a half. No excuses, I’m just a slug. But why should Lenten resolutions be any different than anything else in my life – half done?

Maybe it’s just the old age thing creeping up on me again. Thinking back to things I was going to do, things I started but never finished. Things I should have done but never did. Things I gave up on because they were too difficult. There is quite a list. And just as many excuses as to why they weren’t done.

And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’ ”

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), Lk 15:31–32.

Out of all these things, I guess there is one that I regret most of all. Or maybe I need to rephrase that because the one I am thinking of I don’t know how it is going to come out yet. I guess that’s a good thing, it means at least I can still change the course I think I’m on. And of course, I mean spending eternity in heaven. You know, living with the end in mind.

Saturday’s gospel reading was the parable of the prodigal son. Way back when I started this blog I wrote a post about this parable. This was the one Father Peter quoted to me when I made my first confession in a hundred years. Okay maybe it was forty, but either way, he used it to illustrate how God always will welcome us back to the fold. It doesn’t matter where we’ve gone or what we’ve done, we are always welcome back. Now, does this mean we can keep straying away and sinning? No. We need to make the effort to do the right things, get right with the Lord, follow the teachings of Jesus. If we do these things there is hope for us.

So now it’s time to get back on the Lenten track.