Rembrandt van Rijin, The Return of the Prodigal

based on Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32

In this painting by Rembrandt, the prodigal son has repented and returns to the father. 

The penitence of the son is complete,  the parent receives the son back into his arms with great relief, compassion and quiet joy.  Their reuniting is poignantly powerful as their forms intertwine.  In the shadows stands the elder son.  In the painting the experience of returning and reestablishing community are visually expressed. The aging father almost lunges forward to embrace the returning son, as others observe the reunion.  The son following his own ordeal of self discovery, kneels and leans into the powerful release of his father’s embrace.

Lent is a time for coming to ourselves and realizing  the distance we have put between our selves and God as well as other people. It is a time for recovering our desire for God and for discovering God desire for us to come home.   In a lecture at Scarrit-Bennett Center, Henri Nouwen  said, “The spiritual life starts at the place where you can hear Gods’voice.  However, as Jesus so wisely said it takes ears ready to hear to really listen and eyes ready to see to really perceive.  Coming to ourselves prepares us to return home regardless of how “home” is understood.

In his book The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming  Nouwen speaks of his experience of being the younger son.  How his very successful  years of teaching and his involvement in Central and South American left him feeling homeless and tired.  Then quite unexpectedly after a visit to France and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg those feelings moved to the background and he returned to Daybreak in Toronto. However, in the course of his life there he was confronted with the ways in which he was more like the elder son:  How he was in fact the oldest son of his family and how he indeed was the dutiful son, obedient to his parents, his teachers and his church.  He says, “I had never run away from home, never wasted my time and money on sensual pursuits, and I 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, been just as lost as the younger son. I saw myself in a completely new way.  I saw my jealousy, my anger, my touchiness, doggedness and sullenness, and most of all my stubborn self-righteousness.  I saw how much of a complainer I was, and how much of my thinking and feeling was filled with resentment.”   There followed a time of intense inner pain in which he found some consolation in reading about the agonizing journey of Rembrandt himself.   He began to see how the all forgiving compassion in the gesture of the nearly blind old man holding his son came from a man who had died many deaths and cried many tears.  IHe saw that it was out of those deaths that Rembrandt had painted “a portrait of God in such humility.”

In his misery, a friend visited him at his “hermitage” and spoke to him further about the Prodigal Son.    She challenged him  , “Whether you are the younger son or the elder son, you have to realize that you are called to be the father.”  Her words struck him like a thunderbolt because in all his years of looking at the painting, it had never occurred to him that the father was the one who expressed most fully his vocation in life.   She said, “Look at the father in the painting and see who you are called to be.”  He resisted, overwhelmed with fear.

Nouwen’s final words in his introduction invite his readers to discover within themselves the younger son, the elder son and finally “not only the lost children of God, but also the compassionate mother and father that is God.”

FOR REFLECTION:

Slowly read the story in Luke two or three times paying attention to what draws you.

In what ways are you like the younger son? 

How has a pursuit of success,  popularity or wealth tempted you away from deepening your relationships with God and others?  When have you felt like running away from “home”--whether home be family, friends, perhaps yourself, your church or even God?  Running away may not be physical, but rather a If you didn’t what kept you from it?  If you did, what did you learn?  Did you return “home”?  why or why not?

In what ways are you like the dutiful son? 

How has your loyalty and perseverance tempted you to attitudes of entitlement.  How do you feel about others who fritter away their time and money getting good things they don’t deserve?  How do you compete with others for affection or power?

What does it feel like to embrace your calling to be the compassionate mother or father that is God? 

Is it easier to say you are like the younger or older son?

Has your own suffering helped you to be more compassionate with  others?

What prevents you from claiming that identity with those with whom you live and work?

What companions would you invite to  join you on that journey home?

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:

Macrina  Wiederkehr says that the experience of home is important to our spiritual lives because home is where we are accepted  for who we are, with all of our strengths and weaknesses--where you don’t have to be perfect to be loved.” 

She observes further, it is the place where we ourselves can embrace both our strengths and weaknesses. Some times we want to run away from home because we are afraid of confronting those weaknesses or embracing our strengths.  Sometimes we are not at home within ourselves or within the God who lives within us.

Wiederkehr also writes that ALL of the homes in our lives are “tinged with heaven” and that each has the potential to lead us “more deeply into the heart of God” which is our true home.

(Tree full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary)

For reflection:

What are the characteristics of home for you?

What kinds of homes are there in your life?

When have you neglected or run away from your own home within yourself?

How have you run away from being at home in God?

A prayer adapted from “A Tree Full of Angels”

O Most Creative One,

ever bringing us to new life,

O most Powerful One

empowering us for life’s journey,

O Indwelling One

calling us to our Center,

O Beloved One

loving us as we are,

We can remain away from home no longer

     for we have heard your call:

“Make your home in Me.”

We will stay away from home no longer. 

Amen.