I think of Lent as a training period to develop our capacity for vulnerability, recognition and accompaniment.  My last three blog entries have been on vulnerability.  Recognition was implicit throughout those earlier claims but now it’s time to make it explicit. Earlier we saw that that the Good Samaritan’s vulnerability becomes apparent when he recognizes and then accompanies the wounded man.  Recognition and vulnerability go hand in hand in that parable as well as in the parable of the Prodigal Son as the father’s vulnerability to his two sons becomes evident through recognition and response.  While recognizing his younger son’s prodigal request for mercy and reconciliation, he also recognizes the older son’s resistance to recognizing his own brother:  in speaking to his father the older one refers to his brother as “this son of yours,” but the father entreats the older one to recognize that his son is this man’s brother:  “this brother of yours was dead and has come to life.” (Luke 15.32). Vulnerability inevitably has as its first response recognition. The failure to recognize, as in the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19-31), is the beginning of the path of perdition.  Not surprisingly then in the…