Reviewed by Susan Tiffany
The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming” by Henri J.M. Nouwen
Visitors to the magnificent Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, can drink in the pleasures of the world’s finest masterpieces. One work that attracts thousands of visitors each year is “The Return of the Prodigal Son” by the Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. This painting stirs the heart and imagination of anyone who has seen it if for only a few moments or for several hours.In 1995 my Russian host Sasha led me past the long lines of people waiting to get into the Hermitage to another entrance where no one was waiting. He guided me to the gallery where Rembrandt’s painting dominated, not simply because of its size (8½ x 6¾ feet), but for its content. In my mind’s eye I can still see the painting and the father’s merciful embrace of his lost son as I stood before it during a brief quiet moment by myself in the gallery. Here was Jesus’ parable from Luke’s Gospel come to life.
Nine years before my visit, the Dutch priest Henri J.M. Nouwen also visited that spot where I stood. His visit was much longer (several hours) and he was given a special chair to sit in and move around as needed so he could view different perspectives of this powerful reconciliation unfolding before him. Nouwen studied the way Rembrandt used light to illuminate God’s mercy, and his choice of colors to differentiate each figure’s role in the story. Nouwen reflected on the ragged and broken younger son, compared to the richly dressed elder son, rigid with unrelenting anger. What particularly touched Nouwen, however, was the father’s hands, the gentle yet firm touch of blessing on the younger son.
After returning home from St. Petersburg, Nouwen spent years studying Rembrandt’s painting, realizing how it and the Lucan parable brought clarity to understanding himself. Nouwen writes, “I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son. Belief in total, absolute forgiveness does not come readily.” Yet along the difficult path of returning to God, Nouwen came to understand that “as I reach home and feel the embrace of my Father, I will realize that not only heaven will be mine to claim, but that the earth as well will become my inheritance, a place where I can live in freedom without obsessions and compulsions.” Digging deep into the parable’s portrayal of the elder son, Nouwen learned that the anger and resentment held so bitterly against the younger brother and the father were also part of Nouwen’s nature. The longer Nouwen studied the painting and the parable, the more he realized that he, like the elder son, was as lost as the younger. “He had become a foreigner in his own house. True communion is gone. Every relationship is pervaded by the darkness. Sins cannot be confessed, forgiveness cannot be received, the mutuality of love cannot exist” Nouwen writes.
Nouwen struggled to find a way out of this self-imposed darkness, admitting that he could not do it alone. “My true freedom I cannot fabricate for myself. That must be given to me. I am lost. I must be found and brought home by the shepherd who goes out to me.”As Nouwen looked again at the painting, at the parable and at Rembrandt’s life, he realized that they are not separate entities. They meet together as one – Rembrandt’s story, the story of humanity, and God’s story, coming to a place where “approaching death and everlasting life touch each other,” where “sin and forgiveness embrace; the human the divine become one.”
In choosing a book to review about one of the spiritual disciplines, the discipline of confession came immediately to my mind – of our necessity to stand before God and lay bare our deepest, darkest transgressions, and receive, as Nouwen says, God’s “infinite compassion, unconditional love, everlasting forgiveness … emanating from a Father who is the creator of the universe.”I thought Nouwen’s book would be a good choice for learning about confession and making it a regular formalized practice. For confession is vital to our spiritual growth as it lifts the darkness that weighs heavily on our souls making room for reconciliation with the Light of the world.But at the end of Nouwen’s book, after dissecting the brokenness of the two sons and the mercy and love freely given them by their father, Nouwen presents a study of the father, this elderly, half-blind man who anchors Rembrandt’s painting, and around whom and in whom the action of the parable revolves.In his reflections on the father, Nouwen realized that children don’t remain children forever. They become adults. They become mothers and fathers. In the face of this certainty Nouwen realized that to become a mature Christian he must be more than a repentant child.
In looking at the father’s hands, one painted with a tender consoling touch, the other with the firmness of a father’s guidance, Nouwen saw his own hands. To touch a broken and angry child with hands that forgive, comfort, and heal, and to demonstrate extravagant love had become Nouwen’s call. This, for him, was the surprising conclusion to his years of studying Rembrandt’s masterpiece and Luke’s Gospel.Jesus’ statement “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful,” was the prime motivator that moved Nouwen into the call as father. It was an invitation for “me to become like God and to show the same compassion to others as he is showing to me.”
When we continue sinful patterns, continually going through the whole process of confessing and repenting, and then God forgiving, we often fail to move forward into true freedom and Christian maturity. Nouwen realized that “there would be no real challenge in such an interpretation. I would resign myself to my weaknesses and keep hoping that eventually God would close his eyes to them and let me come home, whatever I did. What I am called to make true is that whether I am the younger or the elder son, I am the son of my compassionate Father. I am an heir. I am destined to step into my Father’s place and offer to others the same compassion that he has offered me. The return to the Father is ultimately the challenge to become the Father.”
The season of Lent approaches. As it does and we consider the state of our spiritual life, I urge you to make confession an ongoing formalized discipline. But read as well. Read Nouwen’s book. Study Luke 15.11-32 and Rembrandt’s painting. And after finding yourself in the role of both brothers, respond to God’s challenge to become like Him, like our Father, and begin a new spiritual discipline of blessing, forgiving, comforting, and extending mercy to the world’s lost and homeless children.