"This son of yours," says the older son. The younger son renounced sonship by demanding his share of the estate as if his father were already dead, and by living as if there were no father, as if he were not the son of one who knows how to love. The older son did not do this; he lived with his father and did everything his father asked him to do. He may even have truly loved his father. But, as one priest said in a sermon on the prodigal son, by refusing his brother, by not wishing to call him brother, the older son also refuses the father; he deprives himself of sonship just as the younger one did before. For if the younger one is now a son, "this son of yours," and he does not consider him a brother, then by that very fact he ceases to be a son.

It follows that only lack of love for our neighbors deprives us of the possibility of being children of God. And it is precisely love that makes us His children, because love is the family trait of the saints. A saint is one who belongs to God, and God is love.

After all, it is good to be the prodigal son returned to his father. Everyone is glad to see you, except the older brother, of course, and the father arranges a festive banquet in honor of your return, one that at another time you would never have seen. The older brother is not upset by accident, and he complains: such merriment has never once fallen to him in his whole life, even though he was always faithful to his father and devoted to the house.

But really, why is that? Why not let the older son rejoice? Is the calf too precious? The calf is not the issue. It is simply the time - one could say wartime. After all, this is about our times, the times when the Kingdom is only just entering the world, and the triumph still lies ahead: that real triumph when the Kingdom will unfold in all its fullness. That fullness will surely be the feast of all feasts, and the triumph will be for the whole world. But for now, it is too early.

The younger son is another matter: he "was lost and is found," and here the joy is not about the triumph of the Kingdom but about the salvation of one particular soul. And such salvation is worth the triumph of the Kingdom. At least because every saved soul brings that triumph closer. But here too everyone in the household can take part. Only desire is needed. And if you are not the main person at the feast, in the Kingdom that is not so important.

"Allowed" and "forbidden" are removed by the apostle from the vocabulary and replaced with the word "free." Freedom is not permissiveness, but the ongoing work of our spirit. What Paul says means that, in accepting Christ, we deprive ourselves of the right to live automatically. Each of our actions must be measured against the standard "beneficial." Everything is permitted; we only need to keep giving ourselves an account of whether such a thing is beneficial for me as a temple of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing that can be excluded from the sphere of our choice.

What am I dependent on? What possesses me, blocking out what matters most, clouding the clarity of consciousness? For one person it is smoking, for another health, for another social contact, and who knows what else can become an object of worship and dependence that acts destructively on our life in freedom. And this life is arranged in such a way that every action must become the result of a free and conscious choice for which we are ready to give an answer before God.