Cedric Pisegna - Make a Move (01/23/2026)
Hi, I’m Father Cedric Pisegna. Welcome to the program. It’s the fourth Sunday of Lent and during the fourth Sunday of Lent oftentimes, we have this long gospel reading about the prodigal son. We’ve all heard that parable and I know you know what it is. I want to proclaim to you the center portion of it to keep it shorter. A reading from the holy gospel according to Luke. The son said I shall get up, go to my father and I shall say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against heaven, and I’ve sinned against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son. Just treat me as you would treat one of your hired hands.
So he got up and he went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, the father caught sight of him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, hugged him and kissed him. And his son said to him, Father, I’ve sinned against heaven, and I’ve sinned against you. I’m no longer deserve to be called your son. But his father ordered his servants, Quickly, bring the finest robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet. Take the fatted calf and slaughter it. Let us celebrate with a feast. For this son of mine was dead and he’s come to life again. He was lost and now he’s been found. Then the celebration began. The Gospel of the Lord. Lent is a season of grace. It’s a time of change in everybody’s life.
It’s a time of purification and enlightenment from God. It’s a time to get unstuck. Many people I talk to tell me, Father Cedric, I feel stuck in an addiction, or I feel stuck in anger, or stuck in lust and I don’t know how to move. The good news is you can make a move. You’ll see it’s a pink background and we did that purposely. Pink and a little bit of purple thrown in there for Lent. Because this is Laetare Sunday. Laetare is a word in Latin that means rejoice. Be glad, joy. The Gospel of Luke and I proclaim to you the reading of the prodigal son from the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke is the gospel of joy. Joy radiates throughout that gospel. And in chapter 15, and I read to you an excerpt from chapter 15, we hear about three parables. And each one of them has joy.
For example, there was the parable about the sheep that was lost and when the sheep was found, there was joy. There was parable about the coin that was lost and when the coin was found, there was great joy. And then, of course, when the son came back, when he was found, there was amazing joy and a great celebration. Years ago, I remember there was a bumper sticker that people had on their cars. And it simply said, I found it! Exclamation point. And they were referring to Christianity. I found it! Rather than that. I think we ought to have a bumper sticker that says I’ve been found because that’s what this is all about. It’s about a God who searches for us. A shepherd who searches for the lost sheep. A woman who searches for the coin that’s lost. And a father who searches for his son.
A son, a daughter that has gone astray. There was much joy and there’s celebration. And I pray that God’s love for you personally will bring you joy. So Laetare Sunday, I remember my mom talkin' about a woman searching for a lost coin. My mother had a South African gold coin called the krugerrand. It was worth about $2000. And she lost it. How she lost it, I don’t know, but I remember how frustrated, how frantic she felt, and she looked for that coin everywhere. She couldn’t find it and she was really distressed. Then one day she looked in a place that she hadn’t thought of and she found the coin and her frantic frustration turned to joy. And that’s exactly how it is where Jesus told us.
How it is in heaven when one person, when you and me give our lives to God. Come back to God. Surrender to God. There’s more joy in heaven over one person that repents versus 99 that don’t need to repent. You cause joy in God’s heart when you give yourself to God. God is frantic over your life right now. Searching for you. One rabbi one time said that the novelty of Jesus preaching was he talked about a God who searches for us. And I think that’s so true. God searches for us. I was asked to do a talk on evangelization. Since I have television programs and radio programs and trying to reach out to people beyond the walls of the church. That’s called evangelization. That simply means the proclamation of the Good News, evangelium, and the Good News.
And in the talk, I talked about what our Catholic Church has been doing for the last, let’s say 30 years or maybe even 40 years. It’s something called the New Evangelization. And this has been going on in the Catholic Church now for decades. The popes have been stressing it. Tryin' to get the priests involved. Trying to get people involved. New Evangelization. I guess the old evangelization wasn’t working and what was the old evangelization? It was more… not that dogma is bad, or doctrine is bad, but you know you can’t really draw people to Christ with that. The black and the white. And even the Bible, sometimes, and of course, you know that I love the Bible and always proclaim the Bible, but you can’t just be people over the head with the Bible. Because they don’t get it.
So we need something new. And what is the New Evangelization? I call it the original evangelization. The new evangelization is the original evangelization. And what was the original evangelization? It was Jesus telling stories and loving people. Not trying to win people. Although we want them to be saved. Meeting them where they’re at and loving them. Jesus told stories and that’s what we have here in today’s gospel. This is arguably the most profound story ever told. The story of the prodigal son, because it’s multi dimensional. Covers a lot of different areas. Speaks to a lot of different characters and the thing about a story is it engages us. It draws us in. We can find our own life within the story. We can hang our clothes on that clothes hanger and all kinds of different ways, different people.
For example, he talked about a father in the story. Maybe you’re a father or mother and your child has fallen away from the faith. And you can find yourself in the story as the father. Or maybe you’re the prodigal son, or a prodigal, daughter, and you’ve gone away. And you’ve left the faith. And you know you need to come back and make a move. Or maybe you’re the older son, or daughter, who’s mad, and angry, and resentful toward your brother or sister or somebody that you know. And you can find yourself in the story there. Or maybe your rigidly religious and you’re jealous of other people that have all these experiences with God and your religion isn’t quite working.
So you’re very angry. There’s all kinds of people in this but my point is that stories engage us. And that’s Jesus’s genius. He spoke to farmers about seeds. He spoke to fishermen about fish. He told businessman parables about money and interest. He met people where they were at and he didn’t talk over their heads. He’s spoke in practical terms. I remember as part of my formation, part of my training in the seminary. I asked to be able to go to Northwestern University in Chicago. Northwestern University has one of the best drama schools in the country. And I knew that I was going to be preaching for the rest of my life. And let’s just say I was kinda green. And I needed to loosen up a little bit. I took some courses.
One of the courses I took was dance to try to get loosened up. And here I am the seminarian in there with mostly girls in a dance course, but hey, it’s loosened me up and now I move a lot more than I ever would have. But the storytelling course is what I want to talk about. I took a course in storytelling. And I said, if I want to be good enough to engage people and to hold their interest, I got to do something that works. And they taught us how to tell stories. It engages people. It attracts people, it captivates people. And that was Jesus’s genius. Throughout the gospels, you see Jesus telling stories. And as I said, this particular story has to do with many different people. And hopefully you can plug into. People cannot argue with your story.
By the way, when I talked about the New Evangelization, I talked about smiling at people, loving people, and being gentle. Tell your story. People can’t argue with a story. And I love what it says in 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 15. Be reverent and be gentle. Again, we’re not trying to win people, or beat them over the head, or make sure that they believe the way you believe, or yell at 'em, or anything like that. And don’t you dare judge them. Be gentle. That’s what attracts me. I hope it attracts you too. I think that’s the number one thing I get from people. Father Cedric, you’re so gentle. And I’m trying to to draw people, to attract people to the gospel. Perhaps in a way that they’ve never seen before. Because God is love. God is mercy. Jesus’s genius was storytelling, multi dimensional.
And the context of the story, and I hope you got this, he was speaking to the Pharisees, to the Scribes, who are murmuring against him because he was eating with tax collectors and sinners. These are the people that would eventually kill Jesus. They murmured against him because he reached out to the peripheries. He reached out to the marginalized. And they didn’t understand that. It wasn’t in their black and white. They didn’t understand how he could do this. That’s not their religion. Oh yes, it is. Love your neighbor as yourself, that’s right from the Old Testament. Love the Lord your God with all your heart. And when asked the question, Jesus said, this is the law and the prophets, do to others as you would have them do to you. The Golden rule, loving people.
But anyway, got him into a lot of trouble and he was telling this parable to them to the religious leaders. It’s like hello, wake up, you’re the one, you’re the angry older son who’s upset because your brother has come back and your father is lavishing his love. Don’t get upset with other people that have had born again experiences or had been filled with the Holy Spirit just because you haven’t. Because Jesus said, «Blessed are you who believe without seeing». And that’s what the father says. He says my son, to the older son. He says, my son, everything I have is yours. Don’t be comparing yourself with what I’m doing to your younger brother. Everything I have is yours. Don’t be a slave. Remember what the older son said? All these years I’ve slaved for you.
That’s one of the things of Lent is trying to do is get us quit the slave mentality and come back to being a son and a daughter of God, because that’s who you really are. Well, he was talking to the religious leaders. And it all had to do with. Please, see what God is doing. He’s reaching out to all people. My house shall be a house of prayer for all people. We heard about early on in Lent. The context is Jesus is speaking this to the religious leaders but we overhear it. When I was taught about preaching to young people, for example, a school, when you’ve got all the grade schoolers there or teenagers there, I was taught yeah preach to them, but realize that the adults will be overhearing you. And that’s exactly what Jesus is doing in this story. He’s preaching. He’s teaching the religious people but through the centuries, we are overhearing exactly what he has to say.
Well, the story centers, as we know, about this young man, who takes his father’s inheritance. Cuts himself off from the family. Goes off with the money, with the inheritance. Squanders it in loose living. He has a great time for a while. He’s the life of the party. And that’s exactly what temptations will do for us. That’s what attractions will do for us. It will give us some joy but a joy that fades. A happiness that fades. And eventually the money runs out. He starts getting hungry. Has to get a job. And he gets this job with pigs. Slopping with the pigs in the mud.
Now pigs for Jewish people are unclean. They are the worst of the worst. And now, he’s slopping with the pigs in the mud. He’s stinky, he’s dirty. He’s cut off from his family. He’s got nothing. And then, and I’ve studied change. And what makes a person come to a conversion? It’s suffering. I laugh because nobody wants to suffer but if you have a person in your family who’s an alcoholic. You know that they have to have a bottoming out experience or an intervention for them to change. Otherwise why are they going to change if they don’t suffer? Well, this is what happens to this young man. He has a bottoming out experience with the pigs, with the mud on his face, with a hunger in the stomach. And it says in the scriptures, he came to his senses. That’s what’s Lent is all about in some ways, coming to our senses, waking up. And he makes a move. And this is what the scriptures is trying to get us to do to make a move. He says, I’m going to go back to my father. I may not be accepted but I’m gonna just say can I be your slave? And he gets up and he makes the move.
It was C.S. Lewis, who said, get this, C. S. Lewis, the great writer. «God whispers in our pleasures but he shouts in our sufferings. Suffering is God’s megaphone to rouse a sleeping world». I think about the story of St. Francis of Assisi. Of course, arguably the greatest saint in the Catholic Church, the universal saint. People everywhere claim him as their saint even if they’re not Catholic. Well, what you don’t know about Francesco, let’s call him because he was Italian. Francesco of Assisi, he was a partier as a young man. They called them the dancer because he loved girls, loved the high life, and he loved to have fun. Well, what happened was he went through a major suffering in his young life. They were having a city state war with Persia. And in the midst of this war, Assisi and Persia.
In the midst of this war, he got captured. And for one year, I’m tryin' to stress how long that is. Francis gets put in this cave, in prison. It was cold. It was dark. And he had no comfort. They fed them. But he was in prison. In that suffering, his personality changed. He sought God. God touched him and he had a conversion. When he got to let out of prison all of his friends said, hey, you’re back, you know, it’s good to have you back. Let’s go party and everything. Lets go. You’re the dancer. You’re the life of the party. He said no, no, no more. I’m different now. And he became this man of peace. Composed that beautiful prayer, «Make me a channel of your peace. It’s in dying that were born to eternal life».
And that’s what happened. His suffering was a dying for him. That’s called Paschal mystery. When we die and rise. That’s part of the journey of Lent. And this is what happens to this young man, he dies. He dies to his waywardness. And he rises again. And that’s what God is calling all of us to. Paul said, I die daily. Jesus said, Take up your cross daily and follow me. And it’s those little dots all together that brings this wonderful conversion. And as you know St. Francis of Assisi became this amazing saint. We’ve all heard about him. And if you’re a Franciscan, or a lay Franciscan, you know a lot about Saint Francis of Assisi, and you know a lot about his conversion, and it happened through suffering. Suffering leads us to something more.
I remember one time I was preaching in Farmington, New Mexico. That’s up by the four corners. And when I was preaching there, a shooting had just occurred in Las Vegas. I’m in the confessional, this woman comes in. She had been at that concert. And this is what she told me, she said, Father, I need to go to confession. I haven’t been going to church. And I was at that concert. And I was so traumatized by that because I almost died. And I want to get right with God. Wow. That’s a little dramatic.
Notice what I’m doing by the way, I’m telling you stories. It’s a little dramatic. Maybe your suffering won’t be as dramatic as that. I doubt it will be but it’s the same principle. It’s our sufferings, our bottoming out, our thorns, if you will if you’re an eagle. Here are thorns cause you to move, and to change, and to get right. No matter who you are, or what you’ve done, or how long it’s been, now is the acceptable time, make a move. If you’re Catholic, please come to confession. If you’re of another denomination, make a surrender to Jesus Christ right now. If you have no faith, I pray that you’ll come to faith and you realize that Jesus Christ saves you.
This is usually called the story of the prodigal son. The word prodigal means lavish and reckless and excessive because that’s what he was. He spent the inheritance. He went off, did his own thing. He was excessive in his partying. What scholars are telling us that this is also called the story of the prodigal father. And I think that’s interesting because what we have really is this father who is waiting. Remember the prophet Hosea? «Long have I waited for your coming». For some of you, long have… People coming to confession, «Oh, it’s been 5 years or 10 years». My record is 70 years, one man hadn’t been to confession. Wow. No matter how long, make a move. And he’s waiting. And then when he sees the son, he runs to him, undignified for a Jewish man, hugs him, kisses him, and then goes, put on the finest robe, put shoes on his feet, a ring on his hand. Now he’s a member of the family. He’s free. The shoes are walking shoes. And he says, «Kill the fatted calf, it’s a celebration».
That’s exactly what confession is. It’s a celebration of your Father’s love for you. For God lavishes forgiveness and mercy. And if you haven’t been in a long time or even if you haven’t been in a short time, Lent is your time. Picture the scene, Jesus has given us an imagination here, of a father, who runs and hugs and kisses and lavishes. Even though you’ve sinned. In picture form, remember what I said, Jesus is a genius storyteller. In image form Jesus is laying it on us. This is who God is. So many people are saying God is harsh and is punishing. And he’s mad at me and he’s mean. Maybe you’ve had surface preachers and churches that you go do that proclaim that kind of a thing.
Well, yes, we ought to fear God because God is awesome. And yes, there will be a day of wrath. Right now is the acceptable time. And we have a God who is waiting for us, to hug us and lavish everything upon us. Lent is a time to make a move. God is waiting. He’s waiting for you. You didn’t just happen to tune into this program. It was meant to be. Simply come as you are.
There’s no other way you can come. We don’t earn God’s love. We receive it. The son had cut himself off from the family. And he, for all intents and purposes, was dead but he came back to life. He was lost and he was found. That’s why there was such joy. God will lavish his love upon you. And there’s more joy in heaven over someone who repents than 99 that don’t need to repent. Why do we have pink in the background? Why do priests wear pink on this Laetare Sunday? Because there’s great joy over what was lost and now is found. And that’s you and that’s me. God’s love brings joy and God’s love is prodigious. God’s love is excessive. And may you sense God’s love for you right now. Please make a move. Almighty God bless you. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.