The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

During the trip I had felt like a strong fighter for justice and peace, able to face the dark world without fear. But after it was all over I felt like a vulnerable little child who wanted to crawl onto its mother’s lap and cry.

The son-come-home was all I was and all that I wanted to be.

into touch with something within me that lies far beyond the ups and downs of a busy life, something that represents the ongoing yearning of the human spirit, the yearning for a final return, an unambiguous sense of safety, a lasting home.

I felt that, if I could meet Rembrandt right where he had painted father and son, God and humanity, compassion and misery, in one circle of love, I would come to know as much as I ever would about death and life. I also sensed the hope that through Rembrandt’s masterpiece I would one day be able to express what I most wanted to say about love.

Gradually I realized that there were as many paintings of the Prodigal Son as there were changes in the light, and, for a long time, I was held spellbound by this gracious dance of nature and art.

When I left the painting, I walked up to the young guard and tried to express my gratitude for his putting up with me for so long. As I looked into his eyes under the large Russian cap, I saw a man like myself: afraid, but with a great desire to be forgiven. From his beardless young face came a very gentle smile. I smiled too, and the two of us felt safe.

I was convinced that, after more than twenty years in the classroom, the time had come to trust that God loves the poor in spirit in a very special way and that—even though I may have had little to offer them—they had a lot to offer me.

The two women standing behind the father at different distances, the seated man staring into space and looking at no one in particular, and the tall man standing erect and looking critically at the event on the platform in front of him—they all represent different ways of not getting involved.

I would never be able to live the great commandment to love without allowing myself to be loved without conditions or prerequisites.

The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realized.

during my time here at Daybreak, I have been led to an inner place where I had not been before. It is the place within me where God has chosen to dwell. It is the place where I am held safe in the embrace of an all-loving Father who calls me by name and says, “You are my beloved son, on you my favor rests.” It is the place where I can taste the joy and the peace that are not of this world.

I am God’s home!

At the time, I did not foresee what it would take to come a few steps closer to that place. I am grateful for not having known in advance what God was planning for me.

I have a new vocation now. It is the vocation to speak and write from that place back into the many places of my own and other people’s restless lives. I have to kneel before the Father, put my ear against his chest and listen, without interruption, to the heartbeat of God. Then, and only then, can I say carefully and very gently what I hear.

The only way to that place is prayer, unceasing prayer.

I had lived a quite dutiful life. When I was six years old, I already wanted to become a priest and never changed my mind. I was born, baptized, confirmed, and ordained in the same church and had always been obedient to my parents, my teachers, my bishops, and my God. I had never run away from home, never wasted my time and money on sensual pursuits, and had never gotten lost in “debauchery and drunkenness.” For my entire life I had been quite responsible, traditional, and homebound. But, with all of that, I may, in fact, have been just as lost as the younger son.

I had been working very hard on my father’s farm, but had never fully tasted the joy of being at home.

she said, “Whether you are the younger son or the elder son, you have to realize that you are called to become the father.”

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.

the authority of true compassion.”

Although Rembrandt would never become completely free of debt and debtors, in his early fifties he is able to find a modicum of peace. The increasing warmth and interiority of his paintings during this period show that the many disillusionments did not embitter him.

As I look at the prodigal son kneeling before his father and pressing his face against his chest, I cannot but see there the once so self-confident and venerated artist who has come to the painful realization that all the glory he had gathered for himself proved to be vain glory.

In the context of a compassionate embrace, our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.

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When Luke writes, “and left for a distant country,” he indicates much more than the desire of a young man to see more of the world. He speaks about a drastic cutting loose from the way of living, thinking, and acting that has been handed down to him from generation to generation as a sacred legacy. More than disrespect, it is a betrayal of the treasured values of family and community. The “distant country” is the world in which everything considered holy at home is disregarded.

In contrast to his 1636 etching of the prodigal son—full of action, the father running to the son and the son throwing himself at his father’s feet—the Hermitage painting, made about thirty years later, is one of utter stillness.

The father’s touching the son is an everlasting blessing; the son resting against his father’s breast is an eternal peace.

Christian Tümpel writes: “The moment of receiving and forgiving in the stillness of its composition lasts without end. The movement of the father and the son speaks of ...

Jakob Rosenberg summarizes this vision beautifully when he writes: “The group of father and son is outwardly almost motionless, but inwardly all the more moved … the story deals not with the human love of an earthly father … what is meant and represented here is...

Leaving home is, then, much more than an historical event bound to time and place. It is a denial of the spiritual reality that I belong to God with every part of my being, that God holds me safe in an eternal embrace, that I am indeed carved in the palms of God’s hands and hidden in their shadows.

Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look far and wide to find one.

As the Beloved, I can suffer persecution without desire for revenge and receive praise without using it as a proof of my goodness.

As the Beloved, I am free to live and give life, free also to die while giving life.

When Elijah sensed this, he covered his face because he knew that God was present. In the tenderness of God, voice was touch and touch was voice.

All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me.

I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.

Why do I keep ignoring the place of true love and persist in looking for it elsewhere? Why do I keep leaving home where I am called a child of God, the Beloved of my Father?

I am constantly surprised at how I keep taking the gifts God has given me—my health, my intellectual and emotional gifts—and keep using them to impress people, receive affirmation and praise, and compete for r...

Yes, I often carry them off to a “distant country” and put them in the service of an exploiting world that ...

It’s almost as if I want to prove to myself and to my world that I do not need God’s love, that I can make a life on my own, ...

these hands have always been stretched out—even when there were no shoulders upon which to rest them.

what were the inner consequences of the son’s leaving home? The sequence of events is quite predictable. The farther I run away from the place where God dwells, the less I am able to hear the voice that calls me the Beloved, and the less I hear that voice, the more entangled I become in the manipulations and power games of the world.

I try hard to please, to achieve success, to be recognized. When I fail, I feel jealous or resentful of these others.

Judas chose death. Peter chose life. I realize that this choice is always before me.

leaving the foreign country is only the beginning. The way home is long and arduous.

Although claiming my true identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation. I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of. While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there.

I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, “grace is always greater.” Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son.

One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God’s forgiveness.

Jesus is the prodigal son of the prodigal Father who gave away everything the Father had entrusted to him so that I could become like him and return with him to his Father’s home.

I am gradually discovering what it means to say that my sonship and the sonship of Jesus are one, that my return and the return of Jesus are one, that my home and the home of Jesus are one. There is no journey to God outside of the journey that Jesus made.

Then in the silence, looking at his Son and all his children, since his Son had become all in all, the Father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet; let us eat and celebrate! Because my children who, as you know, were dead have returned to life; they were lost and have been found again! My prodigal Son has brought them all back.” They all began to have a feast dressed in their long robes, washed white in the blood of the Lamb.