Imagine this: a man entirely careless of all moral and spiritual affairs lives his life in utter selfishness, with pleasure his only pursuit. He lives the high life, never prays, never goes to church, has numerous sexual affairs and has no concern for anyone but himself. After a long life of this, he is diagnosed with a terminal illness and, on his deathbed, tearfully repents, makes a sincere Confession, receives the Eucharist, and dies inside the blessing of the Church and his friends.
Now, if our reaction is “Well, the lucky fellow! He got to live a life of selfish pleasure and still gets to go to heaven!”, then according to the renowned theologian Piet Fransen, we haven’t yet understood the workings of grace at all. To the degree that we still envy the amoral and wish to exclude them from God’s grace, even as we count ourselves in, we are like the Prodigal Son’s elder brother, standing outside the Father’s house (heaven) in envy and bitterness.
