Paying Attention To The Sky

I haven’t quite figured out how to read the Bible yet. Obviously I do but I never get as much out of my own reading as I do out of reading others. Case in point this marvelous writing on the Parable of the Prodigal Son. I’ve read several commentaries on the parable but never one as knowledgeable or illuminating as the following. How does one get to be able to read as well as Frs. Barron, Cantalamessa or Guardini or do? They are my favorites. I know there must be more, so if you know them, leave me a comment here. This Fr. Barron piece comes from The Priority of Christ, a book where he seeks bridge the divide between Christianity and secular liberalism.

“One of the greatest showings of the Gathering (Jesus’ work of gathering the scattered tribes of Israel) is Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, or better, of the father and his two sons. In considering this narrative, we are, hermeneutically (hermeneutics is the science of interpretation, esp. of the Scriptures), on interesting ground, for we are dealing with an icon of the Father told by the one who is himself the Icon of the Father. Thus we have Jesus indirectly crafting a subtle self-portrait. The gathering technique of the father in the story mirrors that of the heavenly Father, which in turn is iconically represented in that of Jesus. In the course of this narrative, we will see who the Father/God/Jesus is and how he brings to himself an Israel that had, in a double sense, wandered into exile.

A man, Jesus tells us, had two sons, and “the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me” (Luke 15:11-24). As many have commented, this demand is presumptuous and highly insulting, for normally a son would not receive his inheritance until after his father has died. Thus, in claiming his money now, the younger son is none too subtly suggesting that he wishes his father would hurry up and die. Especially in Jesus’ time and culture, a more stinging remark could scarce be imagined. The parable opens, then, with the declaration of a clear break in the communion and coinherence that one would expect to hold between a father and his son. And if we attend closely to the language of the parable, we will sense further dimensions of this rupture. The boy doesn’t ask his father, he tells him: “Give me the share of the property that will come to me.” By definition, a gift cannot be demanded; it can only be received graciously and as a sort of surprise. In making his demand, therefore, the younger son is precluding the possibility of a gifted relationship between himself and his father; he is cutting off the flow of grace.

Second, in asking for property that is coming to him, he emphatically confirms the gracelessness of the exchange. Property is what is “proper” to a person, what is uniquely his, what he can claim in at least a quasi-legal sense. In common usage, the word indicates what is to be held on to and defended against counter-claimants: we might hear someone say, “Get off my property,” or set up a sign that defiantly declares “Private property.” Jean-Luc Marion has helpfully drawn attention to the Greek term that undergirds “property” in this story, ousia.  This is the only time in the New Testament that this famously controversial and theologically charged term is employed. In this context it obviously doesn’t have the fully developed metaphysical sense that it has, for instance, in Aristotle, but it does have at least an overtone of the philosophical usage.

The more ordinary meaning of ousia (displayed here) is money, property, or what is “presently disposable,” ready to hand for use. Thus there is a link to the metaphysical “substance,” which could be construed as that which a thing possesses as its own, that which it has ready to hand –as opposed to its more fleetingly possessed accidents. In demanding this ousia, then, the younger son is asking emphatically for something to have and hold as his own, free of any merely accidental link to either the source or the possible destination of his possession. He expects the gift (in a substantive sense) apart from giving, and this is precisely what he receives when his father “divided his property between them” (Luke 15:12).

Here is a portrait in miniature of God in relation to sin. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sought to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, taking God’s place and seizing his prerogatives. At the prompting of the tempter, they wanted to take for themselves a life that could only be received as a gift. Prior to the fall, God and Adam had walked together in the cool of the evening as friends, giving and receiving in a circle of grace, and the original sin is nothing but the rupture of this friendship through the desire to possess ousia. The true God can be “had” only when one disposes oneself to receive the divine life as a grace and to give that life away in turn as a gift. Grace is “possessed” only in the measure that it is received and offered and never held on to.

A key implication of this analysis is that God is himself not an ousia, not a substance, not a supreme being in solemn possession of an infinite range of perfections. Rather, God is a supreme letting-be, a being-for-another, his perfections fluid and generously given. Consequently, in the measure that a human person endeavors to be a supreme being, he falls out of right relation with this God.

As the story unfolds, we hear what happens to “substance,” so possessed. We are told that after a few days, the young man “gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country” (Luke 15:13). We notice the frenzy of possessiveness implied in that “gathering” to himself all that was uniquely his, and we remark the thoroughness of the relational rupture with his father in his journey to a far country. The Greek here is instructive: the young man sets out to a choran makra, literally a great open space, a place without borders or points of reference. In Plato, the chora is the space in between the forms and physical objects, the realm of nonbeing and nonvisibility. The implication of the parable seems to be that this ontological emptiness is the consequence of the younger son’s severing of relation to his father. This is made explicit in the next phrase, “and there he squandered his property on dissolute living” (15:13).

He had made bold to seize ousia from his father and claim it as his own, and now he sees what inevitably occurs when a gift becomes a possession. It is a basic biblical intuition that as long as one is receiving being as a grace and resolving to pass it on as a grace, one paradoxically keeps it. But if one endeavors to interrupt the flow and seize what is received, then that possession quickly withers away, dissipates. When the young man had spent everything, “a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need” (Luke 15:14). Read symbolically, this famine is not merely an unhappy accident that happens to intensify the young man’s suffering; rather, it is the natural condition of the chora makra. Cut off from relationship and the giving and receiving of gifts, one necessarily experiences famine, a starvation of the soul.

So great became the young man’s need that “he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs” (Luke 15:15). In these few laconic phrases, Jesus describes the spiritual dynamics of the “far country.” The only relationship that a citizen of the chora makra could envision is a professional one involving hiring and the paying of salaries. There it cannot be a question of giving and gratefully receiving, but only of the paying out and possessing of ousia. Second, the feeding of pigs (animals particularly repugnant to pious Jews) indicates the dehumanization that characterizes the far country: grubbing for what is one’s own reduces one to the level of competitive and self-absorbed beasts. So pathetic is the younger son’s situation that he “would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating,” but — and here we come to the heart of it — no one gave him anything” (Luke 15:16). This is the mark of the far country: it is the place where there is no giving. It is the country whose citizens only hire, pay, and receive what is strictly agreed to, and thus it is the polar opposite of the land where the young man’s father is lord.

The younger son wandering in a distant land is evocative of the human race — all the descendants of Adam and Eve who have lost contact with the flow of the divine life. Living in the land of hiring, taking, paying, and possessing, they starve spiritually. They are like the sad guests at the wedding feast of Cana who have run out of wine; they are like Israel in the land of exile, pining for Zion; or they are like the psalmist’s deer yearning for flowing streams. How appropriate, by the way, is that last image. The divine life flows because it is a process of giving and receiving; sin is substantive and fixed, “hard” currency.

The only solution is a return to a graced mode of being. And this is precisely what the prodigal realizes in a moment of clarity: “But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!” (Luke 15:17). Even those whom his father has hired — even those only professionally related to him — have enough and more than enough, with superabundance indicating that they are in the circle of grace. Were they merely possessing what their employer paid them, they would be psychologically and spiritually in the far country and would soon enough run out. And this is why the younger son resolves, in the carefully rehearsed speech that we overhear, to ask his father to treat him as one of his hired hands: even the least in the country of grace have more than enough. Then, full of contrition, he sets out to return to his father.

While he is still a long way off (still to some degree in the land of exile), his father catches sight of him (he had obviously been looking for him) and is “filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). The word used in the Greek here for the feeling of compassion is esplagnisthe, meaning literally that the father’s guts are moved, the visceral connection to his child stirred up. This same term is applied in the New Testament to the feelings of Jesus himself: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). This powerful feeling leads to an extraordinary gesture.

As many have pointed out, in ancient Jewish society, it was considered terribly unseemly for an elderly man to run to meet someone; rather, he was the one to whom others would come in a spirit of respect and obeisance. So the Father’s running, throwing caution and respectability to the wind, is an act of almost shocking condescension and other orientation.

When they meet, the father embraces his son and kisses him; then the boy speaks: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Luke 15:21). The embrace of the father is one of the most powerful biblical symbols of the Gathering: exiled Israel has returned, and the Father-God takes him to himself; drawing him back into the circle of light. How evocatively Rembrandt van Rijn depicted this inclusion-enlightenment in his late-career painting of the return of the prodigal: the penitent son is embraced by his father and participates thereby in a light that does not so much come from without as radiate from within the father himself.

The saint, remarked G. K. Chesterton, is someone who knows he is a sinner. Whenever characters in the Bible come close to the divine grace, they experience a heightened sense of their own unworthiness: Isaiah in temple, Jeremiah at the moment of his call, Peter at the miraculous draught of fishes. This is the dynamic at work in the case of the prodigal son. Precisely in the measure that he is reconnected to the graciousness of God and the flow of his mercy, he knows unambiguously his sorry spiritual state. His cruel leave-taking and subsequent sojourn in the choran makra had perverted his relationship to his father, and it is in the embrace of his father that he truly senses this.

However, his worthiness to be called son has nothing to do with his own moral achievement or lack thereof. His father ignores his carefully rehearsed speech, and with an eagerness bordering on impatience, he instructs his servants: “Quickly, bring out a robe — the best one — and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it., and let us eat and celebrate” (Luke 15:22-23). Our participation in the flow of the divine life is, necessarily, a gift, not so much because God arbitrarily chooses those who should receive it but because it is itself nothing but the giving and receiving of gifts. It cannot, in principle, be earned or merited, but only accepted. We can only be embraced by it.

The father’s comment on the reason for the celebration-.-.-”For this son of mine was dead and is alive again” (Luke 15:24) — is theologically accurate. When the divine life hardens into a possession, it is, as we’ve seen, effectively lost; when one wanders away from the living stream of God, one necessarily dries up, and one’s “life” is merely biological. Like the Gerasene demoniac — living among the tombs –the prodigal son had been one of the living dead. Authentic spiritual life is had only when one enters into the flow of grace, when one can accept robe, ring, and fatted calf.

With that the narrative of the parable turns to the elder brother, a man superficially quite unlike the prodigal son, but practically identical to him at the spiritual level. The strategy that the father employs to gather him in should be the focus of our attention. While the father was attentively waiting for the return of the younger son, the older brother was “in the field,” a somewhat more subtle version of the choran makra, obviously indifferent to his brother’s fate. Hearing the sounds of celebration, he approaches the house, and when he discovers the reason for the festivities, he is filled with indignation: “Then he became angry and refused to go in” (Luke 15:28). In accord with his relentlessly inclusive character, the father comes out to this second exile and pleads with him to join the circle of celebration.

Then we hear the words that reveal the spiritual state of the older son: “Listen! For all these years, I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends” (Luke 15:29). Though he has remained physically close to his father, his exile is just as dramatic as his younger brother’s, for he too has allowed his relationship to his father to harden into possessiveness. The harshly economic vocabulary gives away the game: working like a slave, obeying commands, getting something of his own, his friends. Just like his brother, this man wants to claim the father’s love as his own possession and use it as he sees fit. Whereas the younger brother demanded it in a presumptuous way (“Give me the share of the property that will belong to me”), the elder brother “slaves” for it, working in a calculating way in order to earn it.

The problem is that, as we have already seen, the divine love — which is a flow of grace — cannot be received in this manner. The economic exchange model just cannot work, so slaving is every bit as ineffectual as hoarding. Rebellion against God and resentful obedience to his “commands” are equally hopeless strategies, since both attempt to transform the flow of grace into ousia that can be made one’s own.

The gatherer-father then speaks to his older son: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31). From the father’s perspective, his son is connected to him, with him in such an intimate way that the life of the father flows to the son. The economic language of the son is therefore metaphysically and spiritually inappropriate, the result of a basic misperception. The Creator God relates to creation in just this ontologically (ontology studies the nature of existence or being) intimate fashion, giving being every moment to whatever exists in the realm of finitude. Though a creature could imagine itself as existing in an extrinsic relation to God, this would be an incorrect, a distortion. The Redeemer God wants nothing more than to give his own inner life away to the human race – “All that is mine is yours.” The problem is that the sinner persists in misperceiving along competitive lines – “I have slaved for you” — and thus fails to receive the gift.

The prophetic motif of the return of the exile applies, according to N. T. Wright, not only to those who are physically distant from Judea and Jerusalem but also to those who are in a kind of internal exile, spiritually alienated from what Zion symbolizes. The prodigal son and his brother are perfect evocations of both types: while the younger son goes literally into a far country the older son retreats into an interior choran makra. They are co-equally far from the flow of grace. In Rembrandt’s picture, the older brother resembles the father physically, and like him, he wears a sumptuous red cape, but he stands outside the circle of light that envelops his father and brother. The resemblance hints at the superficial similarity to the father that comes from physical proximity and mimicking the father’s behavior (obeying his commands), but the darkness points to the spiritual exile that the older son endures.

The father, with equal vehemence and devotion, reaches out to both wanderers and seeks to bring them into the celebration. Here we can see how this parable is an icon of the Icon of God. In his work of gathering the scattered tribes of Israel — in both external and internal exile — Jesus is the living icon of the Father, whose whole purpose is to gather his alienated creation back to himself. The embrace of the father and his words ‘All that is mine is yours” are representations of Jesus’ ministry of gathering Israel into his circle of influence, which in turn is the Icon of the Father’s noncompetitive and life-enhancing proximity to his creation.

The fundamental problem for both sons is their deep conviction that their relationship to their father is competitive and Promethean (Prometheus in a Greek myth stole fire from Olympus and gave it to humankind in defiance of Zeus). In order for them to be fully alive, they must wrest what is “their own” from him. So it goes when one stands in relation to a god who is only other, and not otherly other.

Human beings will always resent a supreme being, because they will be locked, necessarily, in a terrible zero-sum game with him. And their rapport with such a god will devolve, accordingly, into the mercenary and the calculating, as we see clearly in Jesus’ story. The spiritual strategy of the father is to convince his sons that they are not in competition with him, that in fact their own being and life will increase inasmuch as they accept the gift of his life.This is the “spirituality” of the two-natures doctrine: a divine and a human nature remain utterly themselves, in the moment of deepest connection and mutual participation. What obtains between the creaturely and the Creator is the polar opposite of a zero-sum game, precisely because it is a matter of grace and not ousia.”