DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

Let’s go back to our schooldays when studying Shakespeare. We do recall that famous speech by Portia, in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ when begging Shylock for mercy. These are excerpts from that famous speech:
“The quality of mercy is not strain'd, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. It is an attribute of God himself. “

Though there are doubts about Shakespeare’s religious views, yet we have here proof of Catholic sympathies and beliefs. Christ presented ‘mercy’ in the well-known parable of the ‘Merciful Father’ formerly known as ’The Prodigal Son’, in a deeper sense. St. John Paul II, once said that this parable has the ‘interior form of the love that in the New Testament is called “agape”. This type of love and mercy reaches down to every type of human misery, and every form of moral misery, to sin.

When this happens the person who receives ‘mercy’ does not feel humiliated, but rather he would be found again and ‘restored to his original value’. As you recall the ‘father’ is overjoyed at his son’s return, his son’s re-birth. That means that the father never, during his son’s absence, changed, altered his love towards him. The father’s love remained firm, or even grew deeper. Maybe deep down he felt that the son would ultimately come back. For this reason the flame of love kept up its ardour. It never diminished.

The father, irrespective of his son’s behaviour, remains his father. Likewise the son, irrespective of his misdeeds, he remains the ‘father’s son’, because the ‘truth’ is in himself. The son was undergoing a transformation, which caused him pain, disappointments, solitude, misery, all this until ‘he found himself’ again, until he came to ‘terms with himself’. The value of this parable cannot be judged from the ‘outside’, as things or actions seemed to indicate. There must have been a silent dialogue of the hearts, a distant dialogue between the father’s heart and his son’s heart.

Goodness and dignity have been shelved for a moment, by the son, until he realized the futility of living without them. Yes, he travelled to a far away country. This might even mean three, four miles away, not necessarily hundreds or thousands of miles away, but it means that he was ‘lost’ to himself. Whenever we sin, we will be living in a ‘far away country’, until we start searching for our ‘true’ selves, our true identity. Then we realise our mistakes, and decide to get up, and go back to the Father.

Do we realise how sweet conversion is? Do we realise how gracious God the Father is with the lost sheep? Do we realise that being a Dr. Jekyll we have to face horrible consequences when we let our dark side run wild with a potion that changes us into the animalistic Mr. Hyde? In our case the ‘potion’ is temptation of sin which takes various forms: power, wealth, sex, greed, pride, avarice and a host of other potions. If we realise through God’s grace, we start hating ourselves, or rather, our sins, our old life.

No wonder the father gives us back the ‘ring’ a sign of trust, the ‘robe’ as a sign of honour, the sandals as a sign that we are not slaves, and to top it all organises a feast with the fattened calf and music. I believe that the father of the parable, never slept during the nights, as long as his son was away. He must have felt that his son would come back at any time.

The Flemish Master, Rembrandt, painted the scene and portrayed the father as almost blind, from the constant watching out and crying. BUT this is a very important point, a father does not need the physical eyes to see his son, to forgive his son, to love his son. The heart does all the work; a silent dialogue must have been going on. The same it is with us and God the Father, who has no eyes, ergo no choices, no preferences, He is always in search of love.