“The Return of the Prodigal Son”: A Tribute to Henri Nouwen

Henri Nouwen was an internationally renowned priest and writer. He died 25 years ago, on September 21, 1996. Fr. Nouwen authored 39 books, and his personal favorite was The Return of the Prodigal Son. I have read only a few of his books, but The Return is my favorite also. 

"The Prodigal Son" by Rembrandt

A Bit about Nouwen

Henri Nouwen was born in Holland in January 1932. He was ordained in 1957, and then after studying psychology at a Catholic university in Holland he moved to the U.S. in 1964 to study at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.

Nouwen went on to teach at the University of Notre Dame and at the divinity schools at both Yale and Harvard. But as an advocate of “downward mobility,” in the early 1980s he lived and worked with the poor in Peru, and then in 1985 he joined the first L’Arche community, which was in France.**

In 1986 Nouwen visited the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, and spent hours and hours looking at and meditating on Rembrandt’s 1669 painting titled “The Prodigal Son.” In the Prologue of his book, he describes that encounter with Rembrandt’s famous painting.

Also a Dutchman, Rembrandt died at age 63. Nouwen died at age 64, four years after his book The Return of the Prodigal Son was published in 1992.

A Bit about Jesus’ Parable

There are three main parts in Nouwen’s engrossing book: The Younger Son, The Elder Son, and The Father. Those of us who grew up in evangelical churches have heard most about the younger son: after all, he was the “prodigal” in the usual title of Jesus’ parable recorded in Luke 15:11~32.

Evangelistic sermons on that parable usually concluded with an “invitation” that sometimes included singing the hymn “Softly and Tenderly” with this refrain,

Come home, come home,
Ye who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

Jesus’ point in his parable, though, was about the elder son. Luke 15 begins, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’” (vv. 1-2, NRSV).

So Jesus told the parable to liken the Pharisees and scribes to the elder son, whom the father also dearly loved.

The parable also is about the father, who sometimes (such as by Michael Denk, here), is referred to as the “prodigal father.”

Fr. Denk points out that prodigal can mean lavish and Jesus’ parable teaches that “all it takes is one step towards Him and The Prodigal Father will lavish you with His grace, tenderness, and unconditional love.”

The Point of Nouwen’s Book

Currently, one of the major criticisms of traditional Christianity by the younger generation is that it is too judgmental. So now, even more than thirty years ago when it was first written, Christians need to take to heart Nouwen’s main point: we need to be more like the compassionate father.

Nouwen puts considerable emphasis on the father’s hands in Rembrandt’s painting. The two hands on the kneeling younger son are different: one is a strong masculine hand but the other is a tender feminine hand. Nouwen declares that this depicts the “love of God who is Father as well as Mother.”

In his concluding chapter, Nouwen asserts, “Becoming like the heavenly Father is not just one important aspect of Jesus’ teaching, it is the very heart of his message”—and the key characteristic of the heavenly Father/Mother is not judgment, it is compassion.

Nouwen writes, “Looking at Rembrandt’s painting of the father, I can see three ways to a truly compassionate fatherhood: grief, forgiveness, and generosity.” And he concludes his book with these words:

As I look at my own aging hands, I know that they have been given to me to stretch out toward all who suffer, to rest upon the shoulders of all who come, and to offer the blessing that emerges from the immensity of God’s love.

May we all become more like the compassionate father—and like Henri Nouwen.

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** In January, I read Nouwen’s small book The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (2007). I noted, This was a small but quite profound book that could/should be read often.