The son never repents. I didn’t realize this until I heard a sermon about this parable by a Nicaraguan bishop on the radio, which made that point (among others).
The son never says: «I have been ungrateful and unfair with my father. He has suffered a lot because of me. I have insulted him (in the customs of that time, asking for your part of the inheritance was equivalent to say that you preferred your father to be dead). I have dishonored him and shamed him. I have made him suffer immensely». This is repentance
The son never says: «I have done wrong. I have done evil. I have devoted myself to pleasure and not to duty. I have violated God’s law committing sins against the Law of the Lord, both with my father and during the sinful life I have lived after leaving my father». This is repentance.
The son says: «How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!». In other words: «I have no food. Where can I get food? My father has food even for his servants. If I can manipulate the old man, I will get a constant supply of food.». This is not repentance, but selfishness. The son only thinks about himself, not about the father, about God, about not being evil. It’s all about him.
The son may have REGRETTED having taken a decision that had bad consequences (although the parable never says this) but he never REPENTS. The focus of his actions is completely materialistic: the searching for food. The motivations to going back to his father are exactly the same as the motivations to leave his father: the search for pleasure and avoidance of pain. They are completely utilitarian. The son has not changed. He is not born again. He has no new heart. He is the same.
After this, the son does not go to the father and talks to him with sincerity and honesty. On the contrary, he rehearses a speech to manipulate the old man to get food from him: «I will set out 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.»
Please take into account that this was not the real motivation of the son. The son only wants food. He has never thought of the pain of the father or the violation of the Law of God, he only knows that he can get food by saying these words. Since he is not sincere, he has to rehearse the words he has carefully chosen to manipulate the old man, like a cheap salesman rehearsing his speech.
Then he gets to his father’s house. Instead of speaking from the heart, he repeats his rehearsed speech word for word, like a cheap salesman: “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
Even with that, the father rushes to forgive him. This seems immensely touching to me. It’s like the father is so eager to forgive him that he accepts anything, even this pathetic insincere speech. Being the father God Himself, He knows that the son never repents. The father doesn’t let the son finish his speech (he doesn’t care about this heap of BS). He cares about: «For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.»
The bishop concluded: «The son has not repented and he will leave his father’s house again and again in the future, not only once, but many times. But the father will always be eager to forgive him when the son takes the initiative to go back to his father, even if the son’s motives are not pure. And, after many of these cycles of leaving his father and coming back to his father, the son will end up dwelling in his father’s house forever and he will never leave» (of course, this refers to heaven)· Touching
(Somebody thinks that the current crisis is to get people to repentance so they go back to God. But I don’t think that modern people will repent, when seeing the bad consequences of their evil ways. They may regret the bad consequences and go back temporarily to good behavior. But, once they feel safe again, they will resume their evil ways with renewed energy. Like the prodigal son)