Coming Home

We all know the story. A man had two sons. The younger one asked for his interitance early, took off for sexier places than his father's farm, and wasted all his money in "dissolute living." The older one stayed home, worked for his father, and did everything he was asked. When the younger son--the Prodigal Son--finally came home, his father ran to greet him, embraced him, and threw him a big party.

This simple text (which appears only in the gospel of Luke) yields countless lessons about humility, love, forgiveness, redemption, and grace. The older brother's reaction to all of this, which is less than charitable, offers some additional instruction as well. I doubt that all of human storytelling offers a richer, more complex collection of messages in as few lines. Perhaps this explains the parable's profound influence on figures as diverse as Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rudyard Kipling, Henri Nouwen, and Andre Gide.

One intriguing dimension of the story concerns the Prodigal Son's decision to abandon his self-destructive ways. In many translations, the text says that this happened "when he came to himself." I am personally fond of the Latinate poetry of St. Jerome: "in se autem reversus"--roughly, "but he turned around, and came back into himself."

This season of Lent calls us to change, to become new, to work toward the rebirth in which we will share on Easter. For some of us, that is a summons to a radically different conception of who we are and how we need to live. But, for many of us, that is an invitation to remember who we are, to turn around and return to what we already know, and to celebrate the homecoming.

Amen.