The Return of the Prodigal Son Anniversary Edition: A Special Two-in-One Volume, including Home Tonight

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

But even when it hurts immensely and I move toward depression, this amazing truth about who I really am remains. I am loved.

Resentment, the curse of the faithful, the virtuous, the obedient, and the hardworking, settles itself in the human heart and causes havoc.

Moving away from resentment requires moving toward something more positive, and that something is thankfulness. Why? Because gratitude is the opposite of resentment and gratuity moves us away from the world of earning-and-repayment in love.

Love doesn’t need long speeches. Rather, love is attentive to fleeting moments of peace, kindness, friendship, and compassion. Love invites us as a spiritual discipline to communicate with our loved ones more and more from hearts broken open by compassion.

Perhaps you and I need to look at suffering people in our world from a new perspective. We all know the lonely person in others or ourselves who, through so many disturbing behaviors, is asking, “Please recognize me, please love me.” Human suffering is so often an expression of our extreme need to feel genuinely loved, and when we know nothing about the first love, we turn to others who cannot offer us the love we need. It is then that the cry moves us toward violence.

It is good for us to “be with” and to forgive family members, partners, and children without needing to shape them in a violent way. It is liberating to accept that they are different from us, that they think and act in their own ways, and that they make different choices than we might make. It is important to liberate them to make their own mistakes and to learn life’s lessons at their own pace. And finally, instead of wishing they had lived according to our expectations, how blessed we’d be to be grateful even when they weren’t able to love us perfectly, and how loving it would be to allow them to die in peace.

More and more I sense that the opposite of love is not hate but fear.

Look at the one who wants to welcome the child home without asking any questions. The father doesn’t even want to hear the story of the younger son. The father doesn’t even want to hear the story of his elder child. He simply wants them ‘home,’ around the same table with him, growing up to become like him.