The Return of the Prodigal Son

Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn’s painting The Return of The Prodigal Son is an oil draft of the homecoming of the profligate son in Luke. Therein are pictured the three prime figures: the prodigal son, the eldest son, and the father. 

In view of the scriptural passage in Luke, we see that for the prodigal son, as he “came to himself,” he conceived of a justification for himself as a hired servant: “How many of my father’s servants have more than enough bread?” (Luke 15:17, 19). His journey home was a calculated deliberation, reckoning how he could make recompense to the father as a servant. Yet, among Nouwen’s many insights expounded in his book, Return of the Prodigal Son, he demonstrates the father’s divine blessing with which he rests his hands on his son, a blessing through which the father receives him as son. Nouwen writes most beautifully: “The somewhat stiff hands of the father rest on the prodigal son’s shoulders with the everlasting divine blessing: ‘You are my Beloved, on you, my favor rests. Yet over and over again I have left home. I have fled the hands of blessing and run off to faraway places searching for love! This is the great tragedy of my life and of the lives of so many I meet on my journey. Somehow I have become deaf to the voice that calls me the Beloved, have left the only place where I can hear that voice, and have gone off desperately hoping that I would find somewhere else what I could no longer find at home.’”

The father in Jesus’ parable runs forward and embraces his disheveled and downtrodden son. Rembrandt’s painting vividly displays the son kneeling down, softly resting his head on his father. We are invited to this same blessing. Rembrandt’s painting exhibits the fitting response proper to the father’s charity. The father’s charity subdues the restlessness of searching for the right words. The father moves first, drawing near, even running to embrace him and kiss him.  

The father’s love dispossesses his son of all the words with which he thought to justify himself as a servant, celebrates his return, and blesses the dissipated man with a kiss as his son. Rembrandt’s painting, therein, constitutes a directive to receive, to go back to the father. 

Nouwen’s recapitulation of the parable, as pictured in Rembrandt’s painting, highlights this:

“Jesus has made it clear to me that the same voice that he heard at the River Jordan and on Mount Tabor can also be heard by me. He has made it clear to me that just as he has his home with the Father, so do I. Praying to his Father for his disciples, he says: ‘They do not belong to the world, any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them [set them aside] in the truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world, and for their sake I consecrate myself so that they too may be consecrated in truth.’ These words reveal my true dwelling place, my true abode, my true home. Faith is the radical trust that home has always been there and always will be there. The somewhat stiff hands of the father rest on the prodigal’s shoulders with the everlasting divine blessing.”

Rembrandt communicates on canvas the inaudible peace attendant to coming home. Abiding in the father is our home, and our duty is merely to yield in docility to that love.