Prayer & Gospel Reflections
The Father Who Runs
Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son and the mercy that does not wait for us to finish our apology.
In Luke’s Gospel the younger son rehearses a careful speech on the road home. He never gets to finish it. “While he was still a long way off,” the father sees him, is filled with compassion, runs, and throws his arms around him.
A painting of homecoming
Near the end of his life Rembrandt painted that embrace. The son kneels in rags, his head shaved, one sandal lost. The father’s two hands rest on his back — and many have noticed that they are painted differently, as though one were a father’s hand and the other a mother’s.
The elder brother
Standing to one side is the elder son, upright and unmoved. The parable ends without telling us whether he went in to the feast. The question is left for us.
For reflection
- What speech am I rehearsing before God?
- Whom do I find it hard to welcome home?
Sources and references
- Scripture Luke 15:11–32 — The parable of the lost son
