There was a man with two sons. Younger son asked father for legacy money he’d promised him, and dad gave it to him. After that, the younger son moved away and went to live in a far country. He soon used up all the money his dad gave him by being careless and riotous.
As soon as he had spent all his money, a famine spread throughout the land. In order to support himself, he fed pigs in the fields. He was so hungry he would have eaten the pigs’ food.
It was one day that he realized that even his father’s servants had enough bread to eat, but that he had none at all and could do nothing about it. As a result, he decided to return home and beg for his father’s forgiveness and to ask him to take him in under his roof as one of the hired servants that he had hired.
Seeing his son in the distance as the son was returing home, the father ran towards the son and kissed him when he saw him. Upon hearing the words of his father, the son said to him, “I’ve sinned against heaven and in your sight, and I’m no longer worthy to be called your son”. His father told his servants to get his son his best robe, put it on him, put a ring on his hand, and put shoes on his feet. Then he ordered them to prepare a fattened calf so that they could eat and celebrate the prodigal son’s return. “For this my son was dead, but he is alive again; he was lost, but he is found!”
His father came out and asked his son to come in and join them. But the elder son was still annoyed. He told his father that he had served him loyally and obeyed him all these years, yet he has never had a fatted calf, or a feast laid on for him and his friends to enjoy themselves. Yet as soon as the prodigal son returned, who had wasted his inheritance on carousing with women, his father had killed the fatted calf and, as it were, pulled out all the stops.
The father replies that he is glad to share everything he owns with his son, but on this day he had to rejoice and celebrate, because ‘this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found’.
