The Return of the Prodigal Son, A Story of Home Coming , by Henri J. M. Nouwen( Part 1)

 The Younger Son,
“The younger son said to his father, “Father, let me have the share of the estate that will come to me.”(Luke 15:11-12) Returning means that he had left home.  The request of the younger son is offensive at many levels. It is hurtful to the
father, for in many ways he is saying to him I do not care whether you are alive or dead. This approach of the son contradicts human life at many cultural levels. How can one wish your parents dead?  If one was to make such a request to parents today the consequences are unimaginable.  The community would reject such
arrogance and behaviour.  What the young son was demanding was only entitled to him when his father had passed
away.  This behaviour of the younger son was scandalous.  The younger son also rejects his home by demanding his inheritance. It is downright selfish. His behaviour points to a self-centred individual. He betrays his
family for this coveted distant country and his departure leaves it impoverished.  We can recognise the younger son within ourselves; the rebellious individual and the self - centred person.  One who was rejecting all the teaching of the Church and rejecting his baptism, through acts of sin.  One who preferred the distant country to the church.  We too have wasted our inheritances, and traded our rights and privileges given to us at our
Baptism for the world.  As the young man soon discovers, the world rejects him when he has nothing more to
give. Most of us have spent more time in the world than we have spent in the
church since our confirmation day.  There is joke that says that Anglicans graduate from the church on
confirmation day. True and equally tragic.   Henri Nouwen says, “Leaving home is,
then, much more than an historical event bound to time and place. It is a denial
of the spiritual reality that I belong to God with every part of my being, that
God holds me safe in an eternal embrace, that I am indeed carved in the palms of
God’s hands and hidden in their shadows.”(Nouwem 2010: 41) For Nouwem leaving
means I am still to come home.  For him home is the ‘centre of my being,’ where,‘I can hear the voice that says:
“you are my beloved, on you my favour rests.”We need to hear this voice, for it
speaks to us, it is the uninterrupted voice of God throughout the ages.  When we hear this voice we know that we
have come home.

Fr. Barnabas Nqindi