Scripture Reflection, September 16: Finding Home

Scripture Readings:
Exodus 32: 7-11, 13-14
Psalm 51
I Timothy 1: 12-17
Luke 15: 1-32

As I write this reflection, a framed print of a famous painting hangs on the wall over my left shoulder. This print was the given to me by some dear friends a couple of years ago. It is a print of “The Return of the Prodigal Son” by Rembrandt, the original of which is in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Some years ago the Catholic author, Henri Nouwen, memorialized this masterpiece in his intriguing book of the same title.

I often gaze on this painting, even using it for prayer on occasion. The background is relatively dark, with some shadowy figures that are barely visible. The foreground is dominated by the main characters, the lost son, kneeling with his head resting against the breast of his aged father. The father bends over the son and his two large hands are tenderly placed on his son’s shoulders. Even though viewers see only the back of the son, his desperate state is evident in his tattered cloak and blistered feet, one of which is bare because the sandal has come loose. There is a quiet peace about this scene, as the son rests in the arms of his father after the long journey home. In his father’s embrace, this selfish and reckless son has found a home.

Whenever I hear or read this magnificent story of the prodigal son, I am brought back to an experience I had as a seminarian, when I spent a summer working at Covenant House in Manhattan. Covenant House is a place of refuge for young people in trouble. That summer I worked on the floor that housed young men 18-20 years of age who had nowhere else to go. One day we received a young man on our floor whom we later discovered was only 17; he had lied about his age in order to be on the floor with the older boys. He told us that he had run away from the home of his aunt and uncle in Florida, taken the bus north and spent a couple of weeks sleeping in parks in New York. He explained that he had never known his father and that his mother had mental illness and was confined to a psychiatric hospital. He had caused some trouble at the home of his aunt and uncle and had decided to leave. By this point, however, he had grown tired of living on the streets. We concluded that his only realistic option was to call his aunt and uncle, apologize for the trouble he had caused, and ask them if he could return to their home. He and I made the telephone call together and both of us talked to his uncle. His aunt happened to be away from the house at the time. His uncle told me that this young man had indeed caused serious trouble and that he would need to talk things over with his wife before he gave us an answer about accepting him back into their home.

What I remember most vividly about this experience was the period of about eighteen hours in which we waited for his uncle to call us back. This young man was extremely anxious, wondering if he would have a place to go, any home to which to return. He paced up and down the corridors and smoked several packs of cigarettes during those nerve-wracking hours. Eventually his uncle did call back and said that he and his wife would give their nephew one more chance. So I walked this young man over to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, gave him some food and a few dollars, and he got onto the bus to Florida. Those in charge at Covenant House tracked his return home, but I never heard anything more about him. I have often wondered how he was received at the home of his aunt and uncle and where he is today.

That experience reinforced for me the meaning of home. I was blessed to grow up in a relatively stable home with a family who genuinely cared about one another. This young man had not experienced such stability and support in his life. Despite his confusion and his record of problematic behavior, he was looking for a home, somewhere to lay his head. Home is the place to which we can return to find people who know us and welcome us. Home is the place where we can go after we have made mistakes in our lives, even big mistakes. Home is the place where we can look at our lives with honesty, and where we can find our way into the future.

Each of us needs a home like this. If we have not experienced it in our family lives, we need to create such a place among good friends who love us. In this gospel parable, I believe that Jesus is telling us that each of us has such a home in a sense that is far more enduring than anything we can experience in this life. He reveals that our real home is to be found in the mercy of God. Notice what the father in the story does. After experiencing the heart-wrenching and humiliating departure of this son, he acts in a way that would have seemed totally undignified for a Semitic father. He does not simply open the door of his house to allow his son to enter. When he catches sight of his son who is still at a distance he runs to him, embraces him and kisses him. He interrupts his son’s carefully planned speech of apology and orders his servants to plan a feast. This grieving father is eager and overjoyed at the sight of his child.

All of us have times in our lives in which we feel homeless. It may happen when, like the son in the story, we have made a really bad choice. That homeless feeling can also overtake us at times of painful loss – the loss of a loved one in death, the loss of a friendship, failure in school or at a job. Sometimes we just have a hard time fitting in with the people around us, and so we feel that we are without a home. Such experiences, and many others like them, are very real and should not be smoothed over with easy spiritual slogans. Nevertheless, the powerful word of Jesus in this parable still speaks to us: our real and lasting home is found in the God whose mercy is enduring and who is always eager for us to return to him and find our rest in him.

When you spend time gazing on Rembrandt’s magnificent rendition of this story, you find that your eyes begin to rest and anxiety flows out of you. You breathe in the quiet peace of the scene. You can almost smell the sweet aroma of home. This Sunday’s gospel passage invites us to return in order to find our home in God, whose mercy endures forever.

Click here to view a print of Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son.”

Robin Ryan, CP