When it is said
The Church reads the parable on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, the second of the Sundays before Lent.
That Sunday’s kontakion, a short hymn of the day, takes up the son’s words: “I cry unto Thee with the voice of the Prodigal: I have sinned before Thee, O compassionate Father. Receive me as one repentant, and make me as one of Thy hired servants.”
Where it comes from
Author known
The son who wasted everything
Jesus told of a younger son who asked his father for his share of the estate. The son went to a distant country and wasted it in wild living. When a famine came, he took work feeding pigs and longed to eat what they ate. At last he came to his senses and set off for home, with these words ready for his father.
Luke 15:11-19, Berean Standard Bible
His father ran to him
While the son was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. The son said he had sinned and was no longer worthy to be called his son. But his father called for the best robe, a ring, sandals and a feast, “for this son of mine was dead and is alive again!”
Luke 15:20-24, Berean Standard Bible
What the words mean
More than he asked for
In his Easter letter for AD 335, the bishop St Athanasius of Alexandria wrote that a sinner who comes home with these words “shall be counted worthy of more than he prayed for.” He went on: “For the father does not receive him as a hired servant, neither does he look upon him as a stranger, but he kisses him as a son.”
St Athanasius, Festal Letter 7, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, volume 4
The Scripture in it
I will get up and go back to my father and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’
The son declared, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Greek
Πάτερ, ἥμαρτον εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν, καὶ ἐνώπιόν σου·
καὶ οὐκέτι εἰμὶ ἄξιος κληθῆναι υἱός σου·
ποίησόν με ὡς ἕνα τῶν μισθίων σου.