The Return of the Prodigal Son

A Stay-at-Home Retreat based on the book The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen

Text in Italics is from the Gospel of Luke.
Most of the regular text is actual material from the book The Return of the Prodigal Son. Nouwen uses the painting by Rembrandt, reflections on Rembrandt’s life and his own life and spiritual journey to create a beautiful meditation on love, forgiveness and welcome. It would be good to have the book (with its painting from the Hermitage inside the back cover) with you as you explore those themes with Henri Nouwen.
Reflection questions written by Nancy Greenfield.

The Younger Son

The Younger Son Leaves

Then he said, “A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.”
—Luke 15:11–13

The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides the immense sorrow that has gone before. The finding has the losing in the background, the returning has the leaving under its cloak. Looking at the tender-joy-filled return, I have to dare to taste the sorrowful events that preceded it. Only when I have the courage to explore in depth what it means to leave home, can I come to a true understanding of the return. (34-35)

The soft yellow-brown of the son’s underclothes looks beautiful when seen in rich harmony with the red of the father’s cloak, but the truth of the matter is that the son is dressed in rags that betray the great misery that lies behind him. 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. (35)

What outer “splendor” in my life masks loneliness, uncertainty, or unhappiness?

When Luke writes, “and left for a distant country” he indicates much more than the desire of the 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 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. (36)

Have I left behind some of the customs, cultural inhibitions, moral imperatives, or familial strictures and traveled far beyond where I started as a young person?
Are there any people or ideals that I have left behind that I wish to reclaim? How do I do this?

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 to palms of God’s hands and hidden in their shadows. Leaving home means ignoring the truth that “God has fashioned by in secret, molded me in the depths of the earth and knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look far and wide to find one. (37)

Have I ever felt as though I was in transition between one “home” and the next? Am I still looking for a place where I are physically and spiritually at home? Where is God in my search?

Jesus has made it clear to me that the same voice he heard at the River Jordan and on Mount Tabor can also be heard by me. Faith is the radical trust that home has always been there and always will be. The somewhat stiff hands of the father rest on the prodigal’s shoulders with the everlasting blessing: “You are my beloved, on you my favor rests.” Yet over and over again I have left home. I have fled the hands of blessing and run off to faraway places searching for love! This is the great tragedy of my life and of the lives of so many I meet on my journey. Somehow I have become deaf to the voice that calls me the Beloved, have left the only place where I can hear that voice, and have gone off desperately hoping that I would find somewhere else what I could no longer find at home. (39)

What is the voice that calls me “beloved”? Where have I heard it?

Soon after Jesus had heard the voice calling him the beloved, he was led to the desert to hear those other voices. They told him to prove that he was worth love in being successful, popular, powerful. Almost from the moment that I had ears to hear, I heard those voices and they have stayed with me ever since. The have come to me through my parents, my friends, my teachers, and my colleagues, but most of all, they have come and still come through the mass media that surround me. And they say: “Show me that you are a good boy. You had better be better than your friend! Be sure you can make it through school! I sure hope you can make it on your own! Are you sure you want to be friends with those people? These trophies certainly show what a good player you were! Don’t show your weakness, you’ll be sued! When you stop being productive, people lose interest in you”. Parents, friends, and teachers, even those who speak to me through the media, are mostly very sincere in their concerns. In fact, they can be limited human expressions of an unlimited divine love. But when I forget that voice of first unconditional love, then these innocent suggestions can easily start dominating my life and pull me into a “distant country”. (40-41)

What messages about how the world works and how I will fit into it have I picked up from the media and from friends and family? Have the voices of world drowned out the small, but persistent, voice of unconditional love that is God calling me home?

The world says: ”Yes, I love you if you are good-looking, intelligent, and wealthy. I love you if you have a good education, a good job, good connections. I love you if you produce much, seek much, buy much. There are endless “ifs” hidden in the world's love…The world’s love is and always will be, conditional. As long as I keep looking for my true self in the world of conditional love, I will remain “hooked” to the world (42)

I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found… 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 rewards, instead of developing them for the glory of God. Yes, I often carry them off to a “foreign country” and put them at the service of an exploiting world that does not know their true value. (43)

Has this ever been my experience? Where do I seek affirmations and praise? What “gifts” of yours are valued by the world?

The Younger Son’s Return

“When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went back to his father.”
—Luke 15:14–20a

Rembrandt leaves little doubt about his condition. His head is shaven. No longer the long curling hair with which Rembrandt has painted himself as the proud, defiant prodigal son in the brothel. The head is that of a prisoner whose name has been replaced by a number. When a man’s hair is shaved off, whether in prison or in the army, in a hazing ritual or a concentration camp, he is robbed of one of the marks of his individuality. The clothes Rembrandt gives him are underclothes, barely covering his emaciated body. [The body underneath looks as if all strength has gone from it.] The soles of his feet tell a long and humiliating journey. The left foot, slipped out of its worn sandal, is scarred. The right foot, only partially covered by a broken sandal, also speaks of suffering and misery. (46)

Has there ever been time in my life when I have felt lost because I no longer had the approval or affirmation from those I considered important? Am I ever tempted to wallow in my own lostness and lose touch with my basic and unassailable goodness? How can I allow myself to realize the God understands my heart even better than I do, and that God’s grace surrounds me every moment of every day? What can I do to keep this realization at the forefront of my consciousness?

One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God’s forgiveness. Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing. As long as I want to do even a part of that myself, I end up with partial solutions, such as becoming the hired servant. As hired servant, I can still keep my distance, still revolt, reject, strike, run away, or complain about my pay. As the beloved son, I have to claim my full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father. (53)

God does not coerce our love or our obedience; God offers us love and understanding, offers us compassion and allows us to accept or reject it as we will. God also offers us many opportunities to extend that compassion and understanding to others. Too often we forget that the showing of compassion extends to showing it to ourselves. Can I let go of some issue I have been blaming myself for and trust wholeheartedly in the love of God?

I vividly remember showing the Rembrandt painting to friends and asking them what they saw. One of them said: “This is the head of a baby who just came out of his mother's womb. Look, it is still wet, and the face is still fetus-like.” It is no longer possible for me to look at his painting without seeing there a little baby re-entering the mother’s womb. Isn’t the little child poor, gentle, and pure of heart? (54-55)

What qualities of the innocence of childhood do I need to recover before I truly enter the Kingdom of God? Is it hard, in a world which values independence and assertiveness, to admit a radical dependence on God, our Father/Mother, who loves us as any parent loves his or her child—overwhelmingly and without reservation.

The Elder Son

The Elder Son Leaves

“He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him, but he retorted to his father: ‘All these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’”
—Luke 15:28–30

I often wonder if it is not especially the elder sons who want to live up to the expectations of their parents and be considered obedient and dutiful… They often want to please&hellip they often fear being a disappointment to their parents. But they often also experience, quite early in life, a certain envy toward their younger brothers and sisters, who seem to be less concerned with pleasing and much freer in “doing their own thing” For me, this was certainly the case. And all my life I have harbored a strange curiosity for the disobedient life that I myself didn’t dare to live, but which I saw being lived by many around me…I often wondered why I did not have the courage to “run away” as the younger son did. (69-70)

Do I get upset when I follow the rules and others don’t but do not seem to be punished in any way?

In the [elder son’s] complaint, obedience and duty have become a burden, and service has become slavery… This inner resentment reveals to me my own “lostness”. I had stayed home and did not wander off, but had not yet lived a free life in my father’s house. There are many elder sons and daughters who are lost while still at home. And it is this lostness—characterized by resentment, bitterness and jealousy—that is so pernicious to the human heart. (70)

Has there ever been a time in my life, when I actually abandoned and ran away emotionally from those around me, or dutifully did what I thought was expected of me, but with so much anger and resentment that I really was not present to them? In short, did I leave home without ever leaving?

And it seems just as I want to be most selfless, I find myself obsessed about being loved. Just as I am doing my utmost of accomplish a task well, I find myself questioning why others do not give themselves as I do. Just when I think I am overcoming my temptations, I feel envy toward those who give in to theirs… Can the elder son in me come home? How can I return when I am lost in resentment, when I am caught in jealousy, when I am imprisoned in obedience and duty lived out in slavery? (75-76)

Would the elder son only feel loved, if the father were to indicate that he loved him more? Did he think he deserved more love because he was a better person? How often in my life have I wanted people who loved me to indicate that they loved another less so that I felt more loved? Why is it that we sometimes see our spiritual journey as a competition between others and ourselves for God's approval and love?
How does that competition for the love of another, even God’s, keep me from seeing another as my true brother? We know it is sad to see bad things happen to good people. Why does it bother us so much when good things happen to “bad” people? What does that say about our motivation for doing God's will?

Does the Elder Son Return?

The elder son’s words reveal how deeply hurt this man must feel. His self-esteem is painfully wounded by his father’s joy, and his own anger prevents him from accepting this returning scoundrel as his brother. With the words: “this son of yours”, he distances himself from his brother as well as his father. He looks t the two of them as aliens who have lost all sense of reality and engage in a relationship that is completely inappropriate, considering the true facts of the prodigal’s life. The elder son no longer has a brother. Nor, any longer, a father. His brother, a sinner, he looks down on with distain; his father, a slave owner, he looks up at with fear. Here I see how lost the elder son is. He has become a stranger in his own house. Is there a way out? I don’t think there is—at least not on my side. It often seems that the more I try disentangle myself from the darkness, the darker it becomes. I cannot forgive myself. I cannot make myself feel loved. By myself, I cannot leave the land of my anger. I am lost. I must be found and brought home by the shepherd who goes out to me. (81-82)

Has this feeling of lostness in my human relationships ever been a part of my personal experience?
Have I ever felt this way toward God—that I was not good enough, or holy enough, and God had no interest in me except to find me unworthy and uninteresting? Did I recognize the cause of my lostnes? How did I deal with it? Do I agree with Nouwen that we cannot get out of this ourselves?

Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as gift. Gratitude as a discipline requires a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions are steeped in hurt and resentment. The choice for gratitude rarely comes without some effort. But each time I make it, the next choice gets a little easier. (85-86)

I try to think of some times when I realized I had a choice to be grateful as a response to criticism, even rejection. How can I make myself more aware that I ALWAYS have a choice? Is there a habit can develop as my instinctive reaction to take as an immediate response to irritation and anger (such as saying a quick prayer for the person who offends me)? I pray for the openness and self-awareness that might lead me ultimately to the grace that is gratitude.

The elder son’s dilemma is to accept or reject that the father’s love is beyond comparisons, to dare to be loved as his father longs to love him, or to insist on being loved as he feels he ought to be loved. Will the elder son be willing to kneel and be touched by the same hands that touch his younger brother? Will he be forgive and to experience the healing presence of the father who loves him beyond comparison? (102)

This is the dilemma for each of us. How do I learn to let those in my life love me in the very best way they can? How do keep from demanding that they, or even God, meet my needs, my standards before I can tell myself that I am loved? Am I willing to admit that I might need forgiveness for my lack of compassion, my judgmentalism, my infantile selfishness? In short, when am I going to grow up?

The Father

“While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him…his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration began…

“He [the elder son] became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him…he said to him, ‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’”
Luke 15:20b–24, 28, 31–32

Every detail of the father’s figure—his facial expression, his posture, the colors of his dress, and most of all, the still gesture of his hands—speaks of the divine love that existed from the beginning and ever will be. (93) I see a half-blind old man with a mustache and a parted beard, dressed in a gold embroidered garment and a deep red cloak, laying his large stiffened hands on the shoulders of his returning son. I also see, however, infinite compassion, unconditional love, everlasting forgiveness—divine realities—emanating from a Father who is the creator of the universe (93)

The contrast that exists between the clothes of the Father and the rags of the son illustrate clearly the difference in their stations in life. And yet the Father embraces, touches, the son in all his filth and brokenness. How do I see in that metaphor the love of God for humanity? Can I think of times in the darkest moments of the history of the world when God has very likely been present even though the world was not aware of it?

It all began with the hands. The two are quite different. The father’s left hand touching the son’s shoulder is strong and muscular. The fingers are spread out and cover a large part of the prodigal son's shoulder and back. I can see a certain pressure, especially in the thumb. That hand seems to touch, but with its strength, also to hold… How different is the father's right hand! This hand does not hold or grasp. It is refined, soft, and very tender. The fingers are close to each other and they have an elegant quality. It lies gently upon the son’s shoulder. It wants to caress, to stroke, and to offer consolation and comfort. It is a mother’s hand. He is mother as well as father. He holds and she caresses. He confirms and she consoles. (98-99)

I meditate on images of God that show God’s power to create and sustain: (1 Samuel 2:7: “The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts”; all of Psalm 13.)
I also meditate on images of God’s power to protect: (Psalm 49: “God will ransom my soul from death”, or Psalm 69: “Save me, O God, the waters have risen to my neck”)
Then I meditate on images of God that show God’s unconditional love for me: (Psalm 139: “For it was you who created my being, who knit me together in my mother's womb”)
Finally, I meditate on images of God that show God’s care and compassion: (Isaiah 49:15-16: “Can a woman forget her baby at the breast, feel no pity for the child she has borne? Even if these were to forget, I shall not forget you. Look, I have engraved you on the palms of my hand.”
Which images of God do I relate to the most?

My friend Richard White pointed out to me that the caressing feminine hand of the father parallels the bare, wounded foot of the son, while the strong masculine hand parallels he foot dressed in a sandal. Is it too much to think that the one hand protects the vulnerable side of the son, while the other reinforces the son’s strength and desire to get on with the rest of his life? (99)

What are the vulnerable sides of me that I wish to have caressed by a loving God? What are the strong, energetic and decisive sides of me I wish to have blessed by God?

And finally, there is the great red cloak. With its warm color and arch-like shape, it offers a welcome place where it is good to be. At first, the cloak covering the bent-over body of the father looked to me like a tent inviting the tired traveler to find some rest. But as I went on gazing at the red cloak, another image, stronger than that of a tent, came to me: he sheltering wings of the mother bird. They reminded me of Jesus' words about God’s maternal love: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you refused!” (99-100)

I reflect on Psalm 91: “You who dwell in the shelter of the most high and abide in the shade of the Almighty—say to your God: 'My refuge, my stronghold, my God in whom I trust! You conceal me with your pinions and under your wings I shall find refuge.’” Write your own response to this kind of God, expressing whatever you feel about God's protection and care, even in the dark and uncertain times.

And this includes the older son. Rembrandt places him at a distance, out from under the billowing cloak, at the edge of the circle of light. The father knows that the choice must be his son’s, even though he waits with outstretched hands. Luke’s story makes it clear that the father goes out to both of his children. While the father is filled with joy at his younger son’s return, he has not forgotten the elder. (102)

Using the world’s standards, which constantly compare people, rate them, grade them, have I ever assumed that I must earn God’s love, God’s approval, God’s acceptance? Can I believe that God loves me even when I have made some disastrous and damaging mistakes? Can I believe that God loves me even as I sometimes withhold my love from God? Do I assume that if God loves me, my life should be without problems or sorrow—that the proof of God’s love is my earthy happiness?

As I let all of this sink in, I see how the story of the father and his lost sons powerfully affirms that it was not I who chose God, but God who first chose me. This is the great mystery of our faith. From all eternity we are hidden “in the shadow of God's hand” and “engraved on his palm.” God has been trying to find me, to know me, to love me. (105-106)

“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. (6)

Stay-at-Home Retreat