The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

Henri Nouwen’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son” is an in depth examination of the parable of the prodigal son, as featured in the Gospel of St. Luke in the New Testament of the Bible. Father Nouwen, a Dutch catholic priest who passed away in 1996, offers insightful commentary not only on the parable but the famous depiction of it by master Dutch painter Rembrandt. Nouwen discusses his thoughts and ideas about the painting, from his first impressions of a print of it, to his trip to Russia to see the real painting with his own eyes. He comments on the painting and the parable that inspired it and the end result is an intellectual exploration filled with great insights. Father Nouwen extrapolates a lot of meaning from the parable. He also points out some nuanced interpretations that Rembrandt himself seemed to have about the parable judging from the way the painter chose to bring the parable to life pictorially. The Gospel parable is famous. A father has two sons. The young son one day asks the father to give him the part of the father’s inheritance that was his right. The father gives it to him and the son leaves his father’s home with it to a distant land. There, the son lives a life of debauchery. He squanders the money in pursuits of the flesh and goes completely broke. As he spends the last bit of the inheritance, a great famine strikes the land. The son is forced to hire himself out as a laborer tending to swine in order to sustain himself. At one point, his poverty and hunger reach such a state that he wishes he could eat the scraps the pigs were being fed. It was at this low point that he realizes his mistake: he had “sinned against heaven and against his father” and that he should go back to his father’s house where even the servants had enough to eat. With a sorrowful heart, he does so. Upon seeing his son appear in the distance, the father becomes overcome with joy and emotion and runs to his son to welcome him back. The son asks for forgiveness and the father embraces him and orders his servants to prepare for festivities and to slaughter the cow they had been fattening for a special occasion. As the music and merry-making in celebration of the return of the younger son are under way, the elder son, who had been out working, also comes back and notices the sights and sounds of the party from afar. The elder son had always been dutiful and obedient to the father; he had never rebelled against the father’s authority like the younger son. He asks what the celebration was all about and one of the servants tells him his younger brother had come back and that the father was throwing a party for him. The elder son is immediately resentful. He goes up to the father and confronts him. He tells the father that he had always been a dutiful and obedient son yet never was he given a party like that by the father, while the younger son had lived a sinful and terrible life and now the father welcomed him back as if nothing happened. The father says to the elder son that “all he had was his to have” and that he wanted the elder son to join the festivities because the younger son “was lost but was now found.” The father urges the older son to join the party because the younger son was as if dead, and now, back at the house, had come back to life. That’s the end of the parable. Much has been written about this beautiful and meaning-filled parable told by Jesus Christ to the Apostles, the Pharisees and others. Father Nouwen is one more voice in a rich tradition of commentary on this scriptural passage. In Father Nouwen’s case, he comments on the parable and its pictorial depiction by Rembrandt, extrapolating layers and layers of suggested meaning from the two related works. Nouwen splits the structure of his book into three main sections: first he comments on the story from the perspective of the younger son, then from the perspective of the older son, and then from the perspective of the father. The first section, dedicated to the younger son, is the one most readers and initially Nouwen himself, tend to identify with. The younger son is the sinner who comes back to life by asking and getting the father’s forgiveness. He is the sinner in need of redemption, who, after experiencing despair in the world of the senses and the flesh, decides to return to the father’s house. Nouwen points out elements of the painting by Rembrandt, such as the son’s half-shaved head and his torn shoes, to highlight the condition of poverty and despair of the young son. He also comments on the interesting choice of the younger son’s shaved head and the nature of the father’s embrace around it; an image that to Nouwen resembles the affectionate parental embrace of a defenseless baby. The second section of the book is dedicated to the elder son, who stands for the little Pharisee inside of each one of us. The elder son is a symbol for all dutiful people who feel resentment when “passed over” by one they judge less worthy or less deserving. The hard-hearted order-follower who would rather see a sinner punished than forgiven. Nouwen makes many interesting points about the elder son, of which I will highlight two. The first one, which came to him after much rumination on the story, Nouwen finally saw that he probably most closely identified himself with this character than with the younger son. He does an analysis of his own life and points out his own dutiful, order-following nature from the time he was a young boy, eager to obey his parents and his church. He shares with the reader that he himself felt resentful and wallowed in a type of disgust and self-pity, forever seeking and yet feeling he wasn’t receiving the love of the father that he felt he so deserved. The second point was the fact that Nouwen says that the end of the story for the elder brother is left open: he may choose to accept the father’s invitation to come back into the house to welcome the brother back (an acceptance of the father’s love) or he may choose to rebel and wallow in bitterness and his feeling of unfair treatment, and thus reject the offer of the father’s love. It’s an interesting insight on the elder brother’s ultimate choice. The father wants the elder son to accept his younger brother also, and he wants his eldest to come to the party also, but he doesn’t force his will on the elder son. He respects the eldest son’s freedom to choose, even if to choose wrongly. The father is ultimately respectful of the free will of both of his children, although he certainly has a wish for both of them (to stay together in love and forgiveness and to share his riches). Finally, the third section of the book tackles the role of the father, who stands in for God himself, the ever-forgiving and good father who loves all of his children, no matter whether they are sinful or dutiful. An especially intriguing point Nouwen brings attention to is Rembrandt’s decision to paint the father’s hands, which rest on the son’s shoulders, in different ways. One hand seems more muscular and rigid, a stronger male hand that “holds” the son, while the other, more fine-featured and delicate, a softer female hand that “caresses” the son. Hands that both “support” and give “consolation.” In this depiction, according to Nouwen, the father embodies both the masculine and feminine qualities that he bestowed upon his creation. All of these qualities are being extended to the younger prodigal son as he is embraced by the father. Nouwen wonders if Rembrandt, who had lived a long and eventful life full of success and heartbreak, ups and downs, had arrived at something like a wise old age and painted himself as the old, half blind father who embraces lovingly the returning son. From this, Nouwen extrapolates that he himself as well as all of us, no matter whether we most readily identify with the prodigal son or the elder son, should really be striving to become the forgiving, all loving father. As St. John the evangelist said in his Gospel, “God is love”, and the old man in this rich parable embodies the essence of God beautifully. He loves all his children, the good, the bad and the ugly. The doors of his house will always be open to them. Yet, he allows them the choice of leaving it (as the prodigal son did in the beginning of the parable) or not entering into it if they don’t want to (as he left the elder son decide for himself after the reception party for the younger son was underway). The Father, or God, doesn’t force his children’s hands, but he is overjoyed when they choose to come back into his house. His joy is such, that he creates a great celebration (“killing the cow that had been fattened”) to welcome the returning son. From sinful son or resentful son, the movement that Nouwen suggests we make is a movement of the spirit: one in which we go from being one of the two needy sons to the loving father, the one who forgives, who accepts his children, whose love is the most salient feature in his actions. Jesus said, “be compassionate because the father is compassionate.” And so Nouwen states that we ultimately must depart from childhood and move towards fatherhood; that we must grow from our positions as the sorrowful or dutiful sons and grow into the compassionate fatherhood position, being more like God in this way. He thinks that this is part of the spiritual maturation process that the parable teaches. Further, in the last chapter of the book, Nouwen states that the way to grow from the childish positions of the sorrowful or resentful childhood to compassionate fatherhood is through the disciplines of grief, forgiveness and generosity. Grief is important in the becoming of the father because one must shed tears in one’s realizations of the immensity of sin in the world: the conflicts, wars, molestation, slavery, cruelty, exploitation, abuse and other barbarities that humans perpetrate against each other. Looking at the world from God’s perspective, one realizes the mess the human family is in. This grief, as defined by Nouwen, is a form of prayer. It’s the mournful realization we need to have that the sins of the world are the “sorrowful price of freedom without which love cannot bloom.” This grief is a state of mourning at our freedom-having sin-prone condition. Practicing this grief is a preparation of our hearts for the next discipline, which is forgiveness. And this forgiveness we must extend to everyone we meet by our grief-filled hearts. As Nouwen continues to explain, forgiveness is the second discipline required to attain spiritual fatherhood. It’s difficult to do, but absolutely essential for the spiritual growth the parable teaches. And it must be continuously given to people. Nouwen describes that true forgiveness is as a “stepping over” or “climbing over” all of the clutter that we carry around that prevents us from forgiving others such as feelings of resentment, injustice and superiority; impressions that we have been wronged; anger; “need” for apology; “need” of praise; “need” for the other to be grateful, etc. This forgiveness is the forgiveness of someone “empty of self-seeking”. Forgiveness thus seems to be an act of jumping over the emotional sludge puddle that we create in our souls and giving the opportunity of a new beginning to others as a gift. A gift that is freely given and doesn’t expect anything in return, just like the gifts of our compassionate God. Finally, the third discipline required to shed our tendency towards being the prodigal or the Pharisee-like son and grow into spiritual fatherhood, is generosity. The father in the parable gives to the children. All he has belongs to his children. All they ask for, he gives to them. After receiving the young son back, the father showers him with gifts. When the older brother complains he says all he has is his. The spirit of the father is a giving one, a generous one. To be like the father, we have to be generous like the father; giving in our attitude and actions. We can’t be transactional; we have to be generous. We have to realize those we give to are our brothers and sisters, that we are related and belong to the same family. These are some of the treasures that Nouwen has unlocked in a careful study of both Jesus’ famous parable and the painting it inspired. Through the reading of his book about these works, much light is shed onto some of the darker tendencies of our human nature, but also much light is shed onto the divine tendencies of the God nature that created us and in which we can seek refuge through imitation.

This is Nouwen at his best. He is able to unpack so much from The Parable of the Prodigal Son by looking at each son and the father as well as incorporating himself into each person in a vulnerable, authentic way. This book made me pause and reflect with each page. So much truth in his words as well as thought provoking insights that forces you to be honest in a way few books make you. Loved this work and plan on revisiting it often.

Excellent read. It is very enlightening and very much. Enjoy this story. I will read it again and I’m sharing it with a friend who will very much enjoy it. Worth every penny.

The tale of the prodigal son—who takes his inheritance early, leaves home, spends his inherited money in a life of debauchery, returns to his father’s house in shame, and is welcomed back with open arms—as told in Luke 15 is one of the most accessible of the many parables found in the New Testament. Its accessibility lies partly in its seeming simplicity (which it has in common with most parables), and partly in the power of a story of return. In this short book, Henri Nouwen, a Dutch-born Catholic priest who spent the last years of his life ministering to the L’Arche community for the mentally handicapped in Toronto, has explicated the story in light of Rembrandt’s painting “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” a painting that affected him so deeply when he first saw it on a poster in 1983 that three years later he arranged to sit before it for several hours where it hangs in The Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Nouwen nicely articulates a variety of lessons from the painting and the Biblical story it illustrates. He takes each of the major characters in turn: the younger son (rebellious), the older son (resentful), and the father (compassionate). From each of these, he draws lessons and insights, relating each character’s situation to his own. In the end, the most powerful and surprising insight for him is that he must become like the father in the parable, ready to bless and welcome without judging or punishing. He quotes Luke, chapter 6, verse 36: “Be compassionate even as your Father is compassionate.” (The King James Version uses “merciful.”) So in his reading, the parable requires more of the believer than simply turning back to God and accepting His compassionate, forgiving embrace—as appealing as that sounds. Instead (or, really, in addition), it requires action; it requires going beyond being the repentant, returning prodigal, and being for others the source of compassion, the safe haven that facilitates return. Both the rebellious younger son and the resentful older son need healing, which only the father’s compassion can provide. The story of the prodigal son has always been one of my favorites from the Bible. But as with most people, I suppose, my focus has always been on the prodigal son. He’s the one I could always identify with. Having read Nouwen’s book, I can see that just wanting rest, to be accepted, to be forgiven, is selfish in a way. We all need that, but we also need to make the effort to move beyond it, so that we can provide others with the comfort and the quiet strength that they need. Nouwen’s reading of the parable, and of the painting, is humble, humane, and insightful. I will understand the story differently the next time I read it. One note: I would recommend looking at a better reproduction of Rembrandt’s painting than the one on the cover of the book. Some of the detail, including one of the background figures, cannot be seen in the reproduction used here.

In the Fall of 1983, Henri Nouwen fortuitously comes across Remembrandt's iconic "The Return of the Prodigal Son" painting, just like many of us. That is where the similarity ends. From there, it takes off into a deeper contemplation of the very parable with Nouwen's attention Argus-eyed on the trifecta of dramatis personae in this poignant story: (1) the younger son, (2) the elder son, and (3) the father himself. The summit of the Beatitudes is manifested in this parable. So, to have a sumptuous tour behind each of those three characters in a practical and reflective way, along with Nouwen, was the most enriching experience of reading this book. It was neither schmaltzy nor syrupy, at any point. With an inveterate command over the Classical Languages, especially Latin and Greek, the way he dissects some of the words (for e.g., son using the Greek original of teknon or genus for generosity), added more to the clarity of the central-point he was making, than watering it down with etymological trivia. References to The Bard's sonnets and maxims, besides Estonian and African proverbs were all adding more to the leitmotiv of the reflections. By intensely brooding over his own experience of seeing the original painting at St. Petersburg and applying its Gospel and visual message to his own life, it made it organically appealing to apply the same to one's own life by applying its transcendental and open-ended lessons. I think, as a reader, that was the biggest takeaway for me. I have two qualms about this current paperback edition, though: 1. There is a notes' section in the back, which is pretty rich with references. I only wish, it was publicized properly, if not having footnote markers in the passage, in situ. So, please do not miss the notes' section at the last. 2. The front-cover is printed in a way that it only shows 5 characters, instead of 6. As the whole tome is about the painting per se, I think, it is not impractical to expect that this artwork is provided to the best rendition possible on print. Overall, a wonderful book, for this Lent. I loved it.

This is a wonderful book. If you are looking to grow in your relationship with God. Read this book! Wow

Perfect. Arrived on time and was as described by merchant... and typical of Henri Nouwen's works.

What a a beautiful spiritual journey the author takes us on in his study of Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son painting. Henri J.M. Nouwen reflects on how at various points in our lives we can find ourselves like the younger son far away from the father, then in his homecoming, needing restoration and forgiveness, or the older son who experiences resentment, as we journey towards loving like the father loves. "Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate". "Looking at Rembrandt's painting of the father, I can see three ways to a truly compassionate fatherhood: grief, forgiveness, and generosity." I read this with my book club and we all got a lot out of this spiritual book. I highly recommend this thought-provoking book.

Writing style is simple and conversational, and suits both the simple lay reader and the philosopher alike. Deep reflections that leave us with much to look into ourselves.

The most well written, informative book , On The LOVE of the Father.. & embrace & acceptance of " THe Love of The Father" even when the wayward son was othermost Lost & broken.. Complete acceptance by THE FATHER !!! Full Complete GRACE

Arriva direttamente al cuore e spiega in modo semplice l'immenso Amore di Dio per tutti noi. Non servono trattati teologici per avvicinare a Dio, basta la gratitudine di sentirsi amati così come siamo.

Um dos maiores livros jamais escritos. Todos que o lerem o terminarão muito melhor do que o começaram. A relação de filiação com o Eterno nunca mais será a mesma. Prepare-se.

I recommend this book so much!!!