In the 1930s, the novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned for eight years in a Russian labor camp. In her letters to him, his wife tried to keep his hopes up. In one, she writes that she is dreaming of “when you come back.” Far from finding comfort in the reminder of home, Solzhenitsyn reacted with despair. “The horror was that there was no going back,” he later explained, “to return was impossible.” The man who returned “would be a different person, and she would realize that her one and only, for whom she had waited fourteen lonely years, was not this man at all — he no longer existed.”
“You can’t go home again,” novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote. I once returned to New Haven, Connecticut, where I’d lived for several formative years. Nothing felt the same. The ghost of past memories lingered in the air. The people I knew had moved on. Although the buildings looked the same, the place wasn’t at all the same — not even close. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience of returning to a childhood home, attending a high-school reunion or going back to the office where you used to work.
What are the times in your life when you’ve been a long time away from home, literally or spiritually? If you made it back, did you find that you or your former home had changed upon your return?
The parable of the Prodigal Son is a profound meditation on our struggle to return home. Why do we sometimes reject our home? Why do we flee so far and become lost? What makes us come back? And is it possible to ever return?
It’s a popular and oft-told parable, so familiar that we expect the lessons derived from it to be old news. We’ve heard a hundred homilies about it. But in my experience, this tale of a father and his sons only grows in depth the more time I spend with it. Perhaps this is as it should be. After all, it’s a story of home, and there’s always something about home that, as familiar and comfortable as it is, beckons us to a threshold.
Historical context
It helps to understand the Prodigal Son if we know how the original audience of first-century Jews would have heard it.
Primogeniture
First, the eldest brother in a family at that time would receive by far the most substantial portion of his father’s inheritance. This practice, called primogeniture, was used to keep family property from being divided up to the point that it became unprofitable for agriculture or to keep family businesses unified. Knowing about primogeniture makes the many stories of younger sons usurping their older brothers in the Old Testament so fascinating. When it comes to God’s love and grace, the natural order is flipped upside down. It is the meek and humble who inherit the kingdom of God — those who deserve nothing.
Our Lord is commenting on those expectations of inheritance when he tells his parable. In the case of the Prodigal Son, the younger brother was expecting to receive maybe one-third of the total inheritance. Asking for it early was a sign of extreme disrespect. I’ve heard some priests paraphrase the request as the son telling his father, “I wish you were dead.” At the very least, it was selfish and thoughtless. It also goes against the advice of the Scriptures. For instance, Sirach 33:20-24 says,
To son or wife, to brother or friend,
do not give power over yourself, as long as you live;
and do not give your property to another,
in case you change your mind and must ask for it.
While you are still alive and have breath in you,
do not let anyone take your place. …
At the time when you end the days of your life,
in the hour of death, distribute your inheritance.
Subverting these cultural expectations goes to show the extent of the son’s rebellion.
Unclean food
Second, the Prodigal Son flees to a foreign country. This means he flees the entire culture and religious covenant in which he’d been raised. He rejects not only his father but his traditions. This includes the rejection of God himself. Initially, this is a voluntary choice, but after a famine he’s reduced to eating pig food. This would have been a gross violation of Jewish law. Of course, he didn’t want to eat pig food, but by this point he’d squandered his inheritance and was forced into it. He was starving and had to become a law-breaker against his will. It’s a picture of the addiction that sin creates.
Respect for fathers
Third, when the Prodigal Son finally returns home, his father runs out to hug him. This is unusual. Because of the respect that Jewish fathers commanded, it would have been more normal if the father had waited for his son to address him first. No one would have blamed the father if he had held back his enthusiasm until, at the very least, his son had made a proper apology. Instead, the father casts his dignity aside to greet his son. This detail paints a picture of God’s forgiveness.
A crowd of Pharisees and sinners
Finally, it helps to know who was listening to this parable as Christ spoke it. St. Luke points out that it is the Pharisees who have circled around, so it’s safe for us to guess that the story is primarily for them. Our Lord had recently been spending time with “sinners,” including sharing meals with them as a sign of friendship and reconciliation. When the Pharisees complain about it, Our Lord tells a series of parables about being lost and then found. First, he describes God as a Shepherd who searches out the one lost sheep. Then he describes how the rejoicing in heaven over a repentant sinner is like the joy of a woman finding a lost coin. The third parable he tells is the Prodigal Son. Naturally, the Pharisees would have known that they were being placed in the role of the grumpy older brother.
In my opinion, the Pharisees have a bad reputation that isn’t entirely deserved. Not that they were perfect, but I do think their hearts were open to Jesus. After all, if Our Lord didn’t think they were capable of hearing the Gospel, he wouldn’t have spent time speaking with them. He chastised them specifically because they might be willing to listen! The Pharisees truly wanted to serve God. Their problem wasn’t lack of effort. As the elder brother’s condition by the end of the parable makes clear, the problem with the Pharisees is that they were trying to control God through those efforts. They sought righteousness through legalities and were short on patience with those who didn’t meet their standard. The Pharisees were certainly in need of repentance in the areas where they struggled, but notice that, in the end of the parable, the Father tells the older son, “all that is mine is yours.” The heavenly Father loves the Pharisees and desires that they receive their inheritance and make their home with him forever.
Who do you identify with in this parable:
the prodigal son, his elder brother or their father? Why?
The original audience also included those sinners who had raised the ire of the Pharisees. Having fled far from God, they would have identified with the Prodigal Son. For them, the parable is both a comfort and a challenge. The comfort was the assurance that the heavenly Father continued to love them and would welcome them home the instant they decided to return. The challenge was to emulate the Prodigal Son and have the courage and honesty to repent. We must always remember that God’s forgiveness is transformative. It draws us into the Father’s house. It brings us into the Christian life, into the Church, and provides grace to leave our old sins behind. His forgiveness isn’t a “get out of jail free” card that allows us to continue with our past behavior with no consequences.
Depending on how our spiritual lives are currently progressing, we can read the parable from the perspective of either the Prodigal Son or his older brother. Both perspectives will bear fruit in our lives, and Our Lord is making clear that he will lead both brothers home to the Father.
The door to a deeper meaning
Now that we know the historical background, we can read the parable for its deeper meaning. As the inspired Word of God, the Scriptures always contain layers of spiritual meaning alongside the literal meaning. We start at the historical level and the original audience, but God’s Word is living and active so it builds on the plain meaning (never discarding it) and pushes deeper. When Our Lord speaks in parables, he’s trying to get us to peek through an open door to heaven, to move right up to the threshold. For Catholics, there is always something more. Life is never what it seems; it’s more glorious. It’s always connected to eternity. Coming home to our Father is never quite what it seems, because it’s far more than a restoration of the past. It’s a calling on to the future. Home is ahead of us, not behind.
So, what are some further meditations we can make with the Prodigal Son?
A failed return
The first thing I notice is that the age-old truth that you can’t go home again is confirmed by this story. The story is almost like a commentary on the whole of the spiritual life. Having sinned and been ejected from Eden, we can never make it back again. That’s the bad news. In the wonderful way of his, though, God takes even our mistakes and folds them into his plan for salvation. If we follow Christ, we end up better off even than we would have been had we remained in Eden.
This is why I say the Prodigal Son doesn’t actually make it back to the same home he left. In fact, his entire plan to return home by apologizing to his father is a dismal failure. His father doesn’t even let the apology be made! He cuts his son off and ruins the well-rehearsed plan to regain entrance to the family home.
This is a vital detail. The apology fails. This is because, before he manages to put his plan in motion, his father runs to him and forgives him. The Prodigal Son wants to return home and put everything back the way it was, but the Father has a different plan. He offers something better, a new robe and the fatted calf. The Father is offering a new home and a happiness that goes beyond what the Prodigal Son had abandoned.
When we feel homesick, when we feel the pain of separation from those we love because of the passing of time, relationships that have changed or death has taken family away from us, God offers something better. He won’t reunite us with home in the way we want in this life; he has a better home in mind for us.
We are merely pilgrims on this earth. The pain of nostalgia we experience is but the pain of our permanent home calling us through the door. That’s why it hurts; we want to be there already but still have a journey to make. Like the Prodigal Son, we are in a foreign land and must by all means make our way to the Father.
An eternal banquet
A second detail of the parable that I notice (I’m sure there are many more) is the feast. The feast is contrasted to the earlier famine. The point is clear: Sin starves us. Sin seems pleasurable at the outset but, ultimately, it will keep us out of the feast. The pleasures we grasp so tightly will slip from our fingers, and we will be left lonely and isolated. If we indulge it, sin will take everything away from us.
When we come home to our Father, though, a great banquet awaits. Our Lord often describes heaven as a wedding banquet. The foretaste of this sacred meal is the Eucharist. Holy Mass is the wedding banquet. Each time we participate, we offer ourselves to our Father in sacrifice at the altar. Exactly like the Prodigal Son, we return to the Father asking him to have mercy on us. Exactly like the Father in the story, before we can even manage to get the first Kyrie from our lips, God our Father runs to us in order to love us. The gifts of bread and wine are consecrated by the priest and returned to us as the body and blood of Christ, our true food. We approach our Father in humility and are met with eternal sustenance.
Further, at holy Mass we are covered in the blood of Christ, which is a way of saying that the Father places his best robe upon us. He identifies us with his only Son. I suspect that the original audience would have heard and known immediately how important that detail is — the covering of the son in his father’s robe. It’s a sign of reconciliation, bringing to mind events in the Old Covenant such as the clothing of Joseph (a younger son!) in a coat of many colors. The robe is a sign of light and glory, and the colors are like pure white light shining through a prism.
This is all to say that the Prodigal Son is reconciled to Father not as a servant but as a son. He is received with a status beyond what he deserved or expected. The feast is a sign that the condition of the son in the end is even better than when he started. It isn’t that sin is good and the Son was right to rebel, but the point is that, even when we go astray, God will always find a way to use our mistakes to lift us up to a higher place in the end. God makes all things work for his divine plan. I find this extremely comforting, to know that my mistakes will not and can not permanently derail the work of God. His love is stronger than our limitations and sins. God even folds death itself into his saving work at the cross.
Arriving at our true home
“I will get up and go to my father,” says the Prodigal Son. Another way to phrase it is, “I will rise up.” The spiritual meaning is clear. The son’s true home is in heaven above. Christ has identified himself with the Prodigal Son, and he will “rise up” in his glorious resurrection. In the same way, he will carry all of us who love him home to his Father.
In the meantime, there’s one place we unfailingly find ourselves already at home — in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. This is where God has stooped down to dwell in an earthly tabernacle. Here is where he makes his home with us. The Eucharist, in particular, is a meal of homecoming. It is a direct participation in the wedding banquet of the Father.
It’s no accident that the story involves a son and that Christ himself is strongly identified as the Son of God. Our Lord is telling us that he understands our doubts and fears, he understands why sometimes we run far from home and why we might be hesitant to return. As the perfect Son, he identifies with the lost. He does so not because he, too, is lost or thinks it’s okay to remain mired in sin and rebellion. No, he identifies with us because he desires to lead us home.
We can’t return to the way we used to be before we sinned and found ourselves lost. There’s no going home again. Why? Because God has a far better home in mind.
