In his book, On The Road With St. Augustine, James Smith retells the Prodigal Son story with this wonderful quote at the end.
“That Father of yours comes running and gathers you up in his arms while your head is down, and your mother later tells you, ‘He walked to the end of the road every single day waiting for you‘.”
Beautiful and true.
As a parent you would, as well. As a parable about The Father, that is certainly the case.
In his book, Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen says this of our journey from home.
“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 the palms of God’s hands and hidden in their shadows…. Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look far and wide to find one.”
So for us, as Prodigals, what is returning home?
“One of life’s hardest spiritual choices: to trust or not to trust in God’s all-forgiving love.”’
Strange, isn’t it, how difficult it is for us to believe we’re as deeply loved as Christ himself.
And yet, as Nouwen writes elsewhere, “The spiritual life is a long and often arduous search for what you have already found.”
Ultimately, of the story, Nouwen writes:
“[It is] about a love that existed before any rejection was possible and that will still be there after all the rejections have taken place.”
Amen.
[Painting: Return of the Prodigal Son, Murillo]
