The Lord relented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people. God has many qualities and attributes that come to us from the Scriptures. While the list cannot be exhausted, we generally have come to know God as loving, kind, compassionate, forgiving, patient, and merciful. These are qualities and attributes that have come to characterize God’s journey with humanity. These qualities allow us a peek into the nature of God. Most importantly, they reveal to us a God who has a “human face,” that is, a God who has chosen to relate to us in a creaturely level and as such understands what it means to be a creature. Moreover, these qualities and attributes “allow” the Lord God to act towards creatures in a manner that is not consistent with how a deity is expected to do. Whereas other deities (or rather the deities proposed by some religions) are not known to be moved by the plight of their subjects, the Scriptures reveal to us a God who does exactly that. Although this quality of God comes to full fruition in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ (cf. Hebrews 2:18; 4:15), it is a quality that has characterized God’s relationship with creation from the very beginning. 
The passage from Exodus that constitutes the First Reading recounts one of the several instances of “relapse” displayed by the children of Israel as they journeyed through the desert towards the Promised Land. Thinking that Moses had perhaps perished on the mountain where he had gone to meet God (cf. Exodus 32:1: “ we do not know what has become of the man Moses…”), the children of Israel petitioned Aaron to mold them a golden calf for them to worship. It was a request that was made in violation of the commands and directives that God had given them and as such was bound to invite the wrath of God upon the community. The sin of idolatry was a slap in the face of God since by choosing to bow down before a golden calf, the Israelites were in effect telling God that God was dead to them. By choosing to worship a work of their hands, the Israelites had basically turned their backs on the Lord their God. It didn’t matter to them that it was the Lord, and not the golden calf, who had freed them from a life of slavery in Egypt. It didn’t matter to them that they had made a covenant with God and had sworn to remain loyal to God (cf. Exodus 6:7). In a moment of blazing anger, God declared annihilation on the Israelites, swearing to wipe the community from the face of the earth. It was a reaction that was “justified,” so to speak, for through their action, the Israelites had rendered null and void the terms of the covenant which God had made with them. But Moses was aware of God’s “weakness” and decided to capitalize on it. He “took God aside” and “reminded” God of the promises God had made to the patriarchs, and how the annihilation of the community would jeopardize the fulfillment of those promises. Moses “reminded” God that the Lord is a creator God, not an annihilator, a gatherer, and not a disperser. Wiping the Israelites from the face of the earth, even if they deserved it, would contradict what had been known about the Lord God. The God who had revealed the self to Moses was a forgiving God, a God full or mercy and compassion. The Lord “heard” Moses and relented from what God had planned to do. It is this God of Moses that Jesus would later come to reveal to the world, a God whose story Jesus tells in the parable of the prodigal son that we hear in the Gospel reading for today.
The parable of the prodigal son was Jesus’ response to the self-righteous group of Pharisees and scribes who were not happy with the sight of Jesus mingling freely with people who were considered sinners. They were not happy that Jesus was stooping so low as to allow the perceived sinners to join him at table and in fellowship. If they had earlier harbored doubts about Jesus’ credibility both as a teacher and a prophet, his actions on this particular day might have well served to confirm those doubts. Jesus should have known that by allowing the “sinners” to share in his meal, he was implicitly putting his seal of approval on their sinful way of life. It is safe to say that Jesus did not approve of sin, otherwise his message at the beginning of his ministry would not have been one of repentance (cf. Mark 1:15). However, unlike the self-proclaimed righteous Pharisees and scribes, Jesus, like his Father, is interested in the wellbeing of his brothers and sisters and does not will that any of them die in sin (cf. Matthew 18:14).  
As both our Creator and Father, God’s joy is that nothing of what God has created is lost (God is filled with sadness when we stray from the path marked out for us). However, because of the gift of free will with which we were created, God can never force us to do anything, even when God sees us going astray. And while watching us go astray definitely saddens God’s heart, God will patiently wait for us to come back to God, for we belong with God. We can decide to stay apart from God, but we do so at our own detriment since the more we stay away, the worse our situation becomes. God is the source of life. Anything that separates us from God separates us from life. God is interested in us being fully alive (the glory of God is the human person fully alive [St. Irenaeus]). Like the prodigal father, God will never count our sinful actions against us if we come to our senses and repent of them. Like the prodigal father, God awaits our coming back to God with longing beyond all telling. 
The parable of the prodigal son was told by Jesus to remind the Pharisees and scribes (and us) of who God is and how God relates to us. It is a story that Jesus uses to remind us, in case we get to forget, of God’s big heart, a heart that can never be wounded by our sinful actions. It is a story that Jesus uses to remind us of the outstretched arm of God that is always ready to embrace us and welcome us back home. God will go to great lengths to welcome us back into the fold. May we, like Moses, take advantage of this knowledge and use it to unite ourselves to the Lord in whom is found the fullness of life.