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Blog Author: Fr. John Jay Hughes Related Audio Course: A Journey Through the Parables The story of the prodigal son, welcomed home with marks of honor (a ring on his finger, shoes on his feet), after wasting all his father’s money in “a distant land,” is well known. But it raises lots of problems. Why did the father entrust such a large sum of money to his son in the first place? Didn’t he know that the boy was irresponsible and would only waste it? What really motivated the son’s return? And what had the young man done to receive such a generous welcome? Wouldn’t it have been more reasonable for the father to put him “on probation,” and let him work his way back into the family circle?And didn’t the older brother get a raw deal? “All these years I have slaved for you,” he tells his father. “Yet you never gave me so much as a kid goat to celebrate with my friends.” Who can deny the justification for this complaint?One way to read the parable is to see the two brothers as representing two well known character types: the one restless for adventure and change, the other a hidebound conservative clinging to the familiar, the tried and true. Which of these two temperaments is better? In the fourth talk in his series, A Journey Through the Parables, Fr. John Jay Hughes deals with all these questions, and many more. He shows us how much more there is to this familiar story than we realize. He also points out that it is part of Jesus’ answer to the complaint of his critics: “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” 