The Prodigal Son, also known as the Lost Son, is one of the best known parables of Jesus. It appears only in the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Bible. By tradition, it is usually read on the third Sunday of Lent. It is the third and final member of a trilogy, following the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin.
The story is found in Luke 15:11-32.
Jesus tells the story of a man who has two sons. The younger demands his share of his inheritance while his father is still living, and goes off to a distant country where he "waste[s] his substance with riotous living" and eventually has to take work as a swineherd (clearly a low point, as swine are unclean in Judaism).
There he comes to his senses and decides to return home and throw himself on his father's mercy, thinking that even if his father does disown him, being one of his servants is still far better than feeding pigs.
But when he returns home, his father greets him with open arms and hardly gives him a chance to express his repentance. He kills a fatted calf to celebrate his return.
The older brother resents the favored treatment of his faithless brother and complains of the lack of reward for his own faithfulness. But the father responds: " 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'
The Eastern Orthodox Church traditionally reads this story on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, which in their liturgical year is the Sunday before Meatfare Sunday and about two weeks before the beginning of Great Lent.
References:
Parable of the Prodigal Son. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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