Study Guides by
Henri Nouwen
2 discussion guides available
The Return of the Prodigal Son
Henri J. M. Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son is not primarily a book about a wayward son who comes home. It is a book about you — and about whether you are willing to let God be the father who runs to meet you. It began with a moment Nouwen could not shake: standing before a poster reproduction of Rembrandt's painting of the same name, he felt something in the image reaching into him. That encounter sent him on a pilgrimage — first to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg to sit with the original canvas for hours, and then deep into his own history of restlessness, achievement, loneliness, and longing. What he found there became this book: a sustained meditation on Luke 15 that moves through three figures in the parable — the younger son, the elder son, and the father — arguing that every person must ultimately make the journey from being a lost child to becoming a mature, compassionate father or mother in the household of God.
View Discussion GuideThe Prodigal So
Henri J. M. Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son began with a moment of arrested attention: standing before a poster of Rembrandt's massive painting, Nouwen found he could not move on. That encounter became a years-long meditation on Luke 15:11–32 and on Rembrandt's luminous rendering of it — a meditation that eventually drew Nouwen to sit before the original canvas at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The book that emerged weaves together three threads: the parable itself, Rembrandt's painted interpretation, and Nouwen's own relentlessly honest autobiography. The thesis is both simple and demanding — that each of us is, at different moments, the younger son who has squandered his inheritance in a far country, the elder son who has stayed home but remained spiritually distant, and finally the father whose vocation is to become a person of boundless, grieving, rejoicing compassion. The journey the book traces is from lostness, in all its forms, toward the place where God has chosen to dwell: within the human heart opened wide enough to receive and to give love.
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