By Father John P. Cush, STD
Once again, we come to the most famous of all of the parables of Our Lord in Saint Luke’s Gospel, that of the Prodigal Son. No less than Charles Dickens declared this as the greatest short story ever written. No doubt, we are all very familiar with the story, perhaps etched in our minds through the stunning painting of Rembrandt van Rijn’s classic “The Return of the Prodigal Son.”
Even if we ourselves have never seen the actual masterpiece itself in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, we know it through the image which was hung in countless Churches in the 1990s and early ‘00’s, most especially due to the spiritual devotion to it, which Fr. Henri Nouwen’s spiritual book, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (1992), offered to the world.
Yes, for my generation of priests, going to Cathedral Seminary in Douglaston from 1990-1994 and at the Pontifical North American College in Rome from 1994-1999 as a seminarian, the image of Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son” was a constant image for reflection.
In fact, when I was assigned to teach full-time in 2004 at the high school seminary, the then Cathedral Preparatory Seminary, now Cathedral Prep High School and Seminary, the image of the Prodigal Son was prominent in the chapel of the high school.
Yes, I would dare say that most of us, due to homilies over the years from priests and deacons in this great Diocese of Brooklyn, are very familiar with Rembrandt’s painting, with the two rather distinct hands, one more masculine and the other more feminine, perhaps representing the all-embracing love of God the Father.
What I would like to propose today for our reflection is the absolute radicality of the parable of the Prodigal Son. Even if we were to describe it as the parable of the angry brother, or perhaps more common, the patient and loving father, it is a powerful parable. Yes, as the U.S. Roman Catholic author from the southern part of our nation, Flannery O’Connor, states, “to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures” (Flannery O’Connor, Mysteries and Manners: Occasional Prose, selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1969, pages 33-34).
This parable is meant to cause us not to smile benignly, but to be openly shocked. It is meant to knock us down to our knees and make us realize some powerful lessons, which the great theologian and Catholic apologist of the new media, Bishop Robert E. Barron, has already articulated (and I apologize to the Bishop, as I am freely adapting them, while still trying to remain faithful to his message!): first, to recognize and find your center; second, to recognize that one is a sinner; and third, to know that life is not about you!
Ultimately, this path to spiritual growth, which Bishop Barron describes as the “Strangest Way,” is all about two things: first, perceiving, not just seeing; and second, triumphing over one’s own intrinsic selfishness.
Like the son who abandons his father’s house, how often do you and I just see what’s right in front of us and not really perceive? How often are we able to look beyond the externals, what is immediately available to our senses, to see how the immanent Lord of all creation, of all reality, is really in our midst?
The son who says no to his father’s wishes disappears to a far-off land, and, due to his own pride, due to his own shortsightedness, finds a place with the pigs. To be with the pigs, the most unclean of all the animals of God’s creation, according to the Hebraic Law, would be the ultimate insult to a son of Israel. The fact that he would, as we are told in Luke’s Gospel, long to even taste the food that is given to the pigs should tell us how far he has descended.
Readings for Fourth Sunday of Lent
Joshua: 5:9a, 10-12
2 Corinthians: 5:17-21
Luke: 15:1-3, 11-32
Father Cush is the Academic Dean of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, Italy, and professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical University of Santa Croce, also in Rome.