By Zachary Tan
The parable of the prodigal son paints for us an image of perfect fatherhood with the defining qualities of love and mercy as key to understanding God the Father. Henri Nouwen’s analysis of Rembrandt Van Rijn’s painting “The return of the prodigal son”, paralleled with the scriptural parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), gives us an idea of the divine love which we return to in our reconciliation with God the Father.
The Love of The Father
To love is to “will the good of another” (CCC 1766). We see this expressed in the first aspect of divine love, in the permissive will that is shown by the father. The father in the parable allows his younger son to make the free choice of claiming his inheritance and leaving his home for a foreign land. The younger son’s act of asking for his share of his inheritance is recognised as a radical rejection of the father, akin to considering the father dead. Even then, the father permits it to be inflicted upon himself, imaginably, at the expense of great heartbreak. Free will is God’s way of willing the good of man because it is how man chooses the good. We naturally desire and choose good for ourselves, but our concupiscence limits us in choosing the highest good all the time. Instead, we sometimes choose lower, proximate goods that are intrinsically good but their end is perverted in some form. As St Augustine says, “Sins are committed when, out of an immoderate liking for [the least goods], we desert the best and highest goods”. Hence, we sin and digress from the moral order of God. The freedom that is a gift of love from God allows us to forge our own paths to freely choose good and reject evil, instead of being restricted to a single path which finds no alternative.
The Father’s love is one that takes initiative, who actively waits for the son, ready to rush out to meet him when he comes home. In Luke 15, there are three parables told by Jesus in response to why he dines with sinners. God is the shepherd who goes out to look for the lost sheep. God is the woman who lights her lamp and sweeps the whole house in search of the lost drachma. God is the father who waits in anticipation for his lost son to come home. In this third parable, God the Father, in his love for the prodigal son, rushes out without pride or anger, to embrace His son and celebrate his homecoming lavishly. The Father is not the austere and solemn God that we may imagine. Instead, He spares no expense in celebrating our return, without vengeance or punitive judgement.
Encountering Love: The Sacrament of Reconciliation
For Nouwen, the focal point of Rembrandt’s painting is evidenced by the focused concentration of light on the father’s hands. While such detail may seem trivial, it invites us to contemplate on the duality of motherhood and fatherhood of divine love of God. In the painting, the father “touches the son with a masculine hand and feminine hand”. The father’s left hand is strong and masculine- this represents the fatherhood of God. It exerts a gentle yet firm pressure on the shoulder of the younger son, intending to correct and teach the wayward son again to truly be son and heir. On the other hand, the motherhood of God is seen in the right hand which caresses and comforts, offering consolation to the wearied soul of the son and offering the nourishment to a heart seeking for love. This is the Father we return to in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, not just the patriarch who disciplines mercifully, but who also comforts our broken hearts, and raises to life the dry and barren desert of our souls weighed by sin.
In the final analysis, we see in the parable a divine love which is infinite. This divine love is one which is non-rivalrous. “The father’s heart, however, is not divided into more or less”, Nouwen puts succinctly. In a world where comparison determines our belovedness, God’s divine love preaches the unfathomable message that all of His children are His favourites. For us humans, it is difficult to understand the divine economy of divine love. When the elder son felt betrayed by the father’s willingness to celebrate his brother’s return, the father did not hesitate to leave the party to plead with him to join them. This is the love that we receive in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It does not discriminate between our sins, favouring some people over others, does not measure love based on good deeds, but pours itself out to all of us children in an equal and undiminishing manner.
Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we are invited to see all of this in returning to God the Father. The Father who allows us to leave and return to him without coercion. The Father who waits and runs out to receive us. The Father who guides firmly and consoles gently. He says to us personally, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). In the famine of our lives, let us remember our identities as sons and daughters of God, and return to Him in joyful reunion.
