The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

The Child will take you by the hand and lead you to fatherhood.” I know that voice can be trusted. As always, the poor, the weak, the marginal, the rejected, the forgotten, the least … they not only need me to be their father, but also show me how to be a father for them. True fatherhood is sharing the poverty of God’s non-demanding love. I am afraid to enter into that poverty, but those who have already entered it through their physical or mental disabilities will be my teachers. Looking at the people I live with, the handicapped men and women as well as their assistants, I see the immense desire for a father in whom fatherhood and motherhood are one. They all have suffered from the experience of rejection