The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

something that represents the ongoing yearning of the human spirit, the yearning for a final return, an unambiguous sense of safety, a lasting home.

This is missing from Bittersweet

“coming home” meant, for me, walking step by step toward the One who awaits me with open arms and wants to hold me in an eternal embrace.

relinquishing the security of the observer for the vulnerability of the returning son seemed close to impossible.

I gradually entered into very dark interior places and began to experience immense inner anguish.

“You have been looking for friends all your life; you have been craving for affection as long as I’ve known you; you have been interested in thousands of things; you have been begging for attention, appreciation, and affirmation left and right. The time has come to claim your true vocation—to be a father who can welcome his children home without asking them any questions and without wanting anything from them in return.

Anger, resentment, jealousy, desire for revenge, lust, greed, antagonisms, and rivalries are the obvious signs that I have left home.

Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn’t pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else’s success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God’s favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve.

The younger son’s return takes place in the very moment that he reclaims his sonship, even though he has lost all the dignity that belongs to it.

I am seldom without some imaginary encounter in my head in which I explain myself, boast or apologize, proclaim or defend, evoke praise or pity. It seems that I am perpetually involved in long dialogues with absent partners, anticipating their questions and preparing my responses. I am amazed by the emotional energy that goes into these inner ruminations and murmurings.

Jesus does not ask me to remain a child but to become one. Becoming a child is living toward a second innocence: not the innocence of the newborn infant, but the innocence that is reached through conscious choices.

Through it all he had moved from the exterior light to the interior light, from the portrayal of external events to the portrayal of the inner meanings, from a life full of things and people to a life more marked by solitude and silence. With age, he grew more interior and still. It was a spiritual homecoming.

from Rembrandt’s painting, it is clear that the hardest conversion to go through is the conversion of the one who stayed home.

I had stayed home and didn’t wander off, but I had not yet lived a free life in my father’s house. My anger and envy showed me my own bondage.

Outwardly, the elder son was faultless. But when confronted by his father’s joy at the return of his younger brother, a dark power erupts in him and boils to the surface. Suddenly, there becomes glaringly visible a resentful, proud, unkind, selfish person, one that had remained deeply hidden,

It is the complaint that cries out: “I tried so hard, worked so long, did so much, and still I have not received what others get so easily. Why do people not thank me, not invite me, not play with me, not honor me, while they pay so much attention to those who take life so easily and so casually?”

Complaining is self-perpetuating and counterproductive.

I was completely incapacitated—unable to receive and participate in the joy that was there.

My resentment is not something that can be easily distinguished and dealt with rationally. It is far more pernicious: something that has attached itself to the underside of my virtue.

And it seems that just as I want to be most selfless, I find myself obsessed about being loved.

Here, I am faced with my own true poverty. I am totally unable to root out my resentments.

‘You must be born from above.’ ” Indeed, something has to happen that I myself cannot cause to happen.

To be afraid or to show disdain, to suffer submission or to enforce control, to be an oppressor or to be a victim: these have become the choices for one outside of the light.

There is no longer any trust. Each little move calls for a countermove; each little remark begs for analysis; the smallest gesture has to be evaluated. This is the pathology of the darkness.

I realized that I had not yet grown up completely. I felt strongly the call to lay to rest my adolescent complaints

I see it as a true return, the return from a false dependence on a human father who cannot give me all I need to a true dependence on the divine Father who says: “You are with me always, and all I have is yours”; the return also from my complaining, comparing, resentful self to my true self that is free to give and receive love.

the freedom to live my own life and die my own death.

Trust and gratitude are the disciplines for the conversion of the elder son.

The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love,

The spiritual truth is completely enfleshed.

The Father’s heart knows all the pain that will come from that choice, but his love makes him powerless to prevent it.

Here is the God I want to believe in: a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting; never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders. His only desire is to bless.

The world in which I have grown up is a world so full of grades, scores, and statistics that, consciously or unconsciously, I always try to take my measure against all the others.

Our God, who is both Father and Mother to us, does not compare.

It requires an interior about-face to accept such a non-comparing way of thinking.

Here lies hidden the great call to conversion: to look not with the eyes of my own low self-esteem, but with the eyes of God’s love.

God is not the patriarch who stays home, doesn’t move, and expects his children to come to him, apologize for their aberrant behavior, beg for forgiveness, and promise to do better. To the contrary, he leaves the house, ignoring his dignity by running toward them, pays no heed to apologies and promises of change, and brings them to the table richly prepared for them.

I came to consider it a good thing to deprecate myself. But now I realize that the real sin is to deny God’s first love for me, to ignore my original goodness.

Jesus’ whole life and preaching had only one aim: to reveal this inexhaustible, unlimited motherly and fatherly love of his God and to show the way to let that love guide every part of our daily lives.

Not only does the father forgive without asking questions and joyfully welcome his lost son home, but he cannot wait to give him new life, life in abundance. So strongly does God desire to give life to his returning son that he seems almost impatient.

the word “Quick,” with which the father exhorts his servants to bring his son the robe, ring, and sandals, expresses much more than a human impatience. It reveals the divine eagerness to inaugurate the new Kingdom that has been prepared from the beginning of time.

It is an important question because it touches—strange as it may sound—my resistance to living a joyful life.

The father of the prodigal son gives himself totally to the joy that his returning son brings him. I have to learn from that. I have to learn to “steal” all the real joy there is to steal and lift it up for others to see.

The reward of choosing joy is joy itself.

Every moment of each day I have the chance to choose between cynicism and joy. Every thought I have can be cynical or joyful. Every word I speak can be cynical or joyful. Every action can be cynical or joyful.

But the closer I come to home the clearer becomes the realization that there is a call beyond the call to return.

Isn’t there a subtle pressure in both the Church and society to remain a dependent child?

gratification? Who has truly challenged us to liberate ourselves from immature dependencies and to accept the burden of responsible adults?

The return to the Father is ultimately the challenge to become the Father.

I cannot remain a child forever, I cannot keep pointing to my father as an excuse for my life. I have to dare to stretch out my own hands in blessing and to receive with ultimate compassion my children, regardless of how they feel or think about me.

As long as we belong to this world, we will remain subject to its competitive ways and expect to be rewarded for all the good we do. But when we belong to God, who loves us without conditions, we can live as he does. The great conversion called for by Jesus is to move from belonging to the world to belonging to God.