Parish Missions

are times when an arrogant independence drives us away from those who most care about us. Like the younger son we become so obsessed with ourselves, that we relinquish what would most sustain us in times of trouble.

The alienation and loneliness that the prodigal experienced drove him home again. His motives, however, are not entirely pure. Basically, he is hungry--more for food than his father’s love. He rehearses a speech which he hopes will assuage what he perceives as his father’s likely anger and disappointment. But his father’s rush to welcome him cuts his confession short. The father isn’t interested in words. The son’s movement toward him, regardless of the motivation, is all that the father yearns for.

The older child is resentful and angry, jealous his younger brother has been so favored in spite of the younger’s profligate life. There is no mask to the older son’s behavior. He unabashedly sees his service to his father as a right to be singled out and appreciated. Like his bother's, the motives behind his loyalty are suspect. We are often like the older child, convinced that we can curry the favor of others by our actions, short-circuiting the graced opportunity to develop relationships based on care and concern.

When this stratagem fails, anger paralyzes the older child and ruptures his relationship with his father as well as with his brother. With a crippling pride, he refuses to enter into the celebration of the other. But that does not keep the father from coming out to him as he had for his prodigal son. The father tries to let reason reveal his universal compassion. We are left unsatisfied as to the outcome of that encounter, which in itself offers pause for reflection.

What happens as we try to understand the two children is that we get a profoundly clear picture of the father. Nouwen admits that in both the parable and Rembrandt’s painting he had often seen himself as the wayward son.

I saw forgiveness, reconciliation, healing; I also saw safety,

rest, being at home. I was so deeply touched by this image

of the life-giving embrace of the father and son because

everything in me yearned to be received in the way the

prodigal son was received.

We face the same yearning as we view or read the parable. Our own human weakness weighs on us so that we place ourselves in the postion of that younger son, embraced with warmth and welcome.

The Rembrandt painting also led Nouwen to identify with the older son. He recognized that the artist evoked a tension in the painting he hadn’t noticed in the parable.

There is not only the light-filled reconciliation between the

father and the younger son, but also the dark, resentful

distance of the elder son. There is repentance, but also

anger. There is communion, but also alienation. There

is the warm glow of healing, but also the coolness of the

critical eye; there is the offer of mercy, but also the enormous

resistance against receiving it.

What Nouwen saw of himself in the older child, we can see in ourselves. Resentment, anger, and alienation are a deadly combination in any relationship.

The beauty of this self-reflection is the awesome realization of what the identification with the two sons leads to is an understanding of the call to be the father!

…after a long life as son, I know for sure that the true call

is to become the father who only blesses in endless

compassion, asking no questions, always giving and

forgiving, never expecting anything in return.

........

I stand in awe of the place where Rembrandt brought me.

He led me from the kneeling, disheveled young son to the

standing, bent-over old father, from the place of being

blessed to the place of blessing.

Would that our embracing this Sacred Story lead us to the same destination, blessing others in endless compassion.

* Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son,

New York: Image Doubleday, 1992