The Return of the Prodigal Son - Retold

An excellent short book by Henri Nouwen, based on his chance encounter with a reproduction of Rembrandt's painiting The Return of the Prodigal Son. Nouwen re-examines his own spiritual journey by re-telling Jesus' famous parable (Luke 15:11-32, Nouwen terms it "The Story of Two Sons and Their Father") by focusing not just on the wayward son, but also by looking deeply at the role and heart of the father, and the elder son.

The wikipedia entry(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Nouwen) sums up below the former Dutch priest's novel approach towards the story:

In Return of the Prodigal Son, for example, Nouwen describes love and forgiveness as unconditional. Though this is not a novel idea, Nouwen's approach is arguably unique as we approached this theme from the angles of the younger son, the elder son, and the father.

Each captures the unconditional quality of love and forgiveness in their own way. The younger son's life shows how the beloved lives a life of misery by thinking he can be loved only by meeting certain qualifications of the lover (which he fails to meet). The elder son's actions shows how the beloved can be depressed because he thinks he should receive greater love because he has done all the right things (i.e., that he has met these qualifications). The father alone understands how to love and forgive and is able to do so and be happy.

Nouwen explains that we are the younger son at times (when we think we don't deserve the love or the forgiveness) and the elder son at times (when we think we deserve love or that another doesn't deserve it more than us), but that we are all called to be like the father (and that only by being like the father can we come closer to being loved as we should be loved).

This book intimately relates each of us to our own relationships with God, our parents, our siblings, and ourselves and provokes many a meaningful reflection. A must read.

WHERE MISERY & MERCY MEET

Having seen some of the poverty of Paris and having heard Jean (Vanier) say last Sunday that we are called not just to serve the poor but to be poor, I was struck forcefully by his words. To choose the little people. the little joys, the little sorrows, and to trust that it is there that God will come close - that is the hard way of Jesus. Again I felt a deep resistance toward choosing that way.

I am quite willing to work for and even with little people, but I want it to be a great event! Something in me always wants to turn the way of Jesus into a way that is honorable in the eyes of the world. I always want the little way to become the big way. But Jesus' movement towards the places the world wants to move away from cannot be made into a success story.

Every time we think we have touched a place of poverty, we will discover greater poverty beyond that place. There is really no way back to riches, wealth, success, acclaim, and prizes. Beyond physical poverty there is mental poverty, beyond mental poverty there is spiritual poverty, and beyond that there is nothing, nothing but the naked truth that God is mercy.

It is not a way we can walk alone. Only with Jesus can we go to the place where there is nothing but mercy. It is the place from which Jesus cried, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It is also the place from which Jesus was raised up to new life.

The way of Jesus can be walked only with Jesus. If I want to do it alone, it becomes a form of inverse heroism as fickle as heroism itself. Only Jesus, the Son of God, can walk to that place of total surrender and mercy. He warns us about striking off on our own: "cut off from me, you can do nothing." But he also promises. "Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty" (John 15:5)

I can see clearly why action without prayer is so fruitless. It is only in and through prayer that we can become intimately connected with Jesus and find strength to join him on his way.

- Excerpt from "The Road to Daybreak - A Spiritual Journey", by Henri J.M. Nouwen