Contrition in its many forms (Psalm 32; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32)
The prodigal’s return looks more like a strategy than a wholehearted conversion.
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Although Psalm 32 is counted among the Psalter’s seven penitential psalms, there is nothing lachrymose about it: it both begins and ends with outbursts of joy. This is because it presupposes a chastened sinner’s turnaround or metanoia—a change of heart and mind familiar to all of us in the words of John Newton’s “Amazing Grace”: “I once was lost, but now am found, / Was blind, but now I see.”
