Henri Nouwen

The 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.