Home Tonight: Further Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son

By Henri J.M. Nouwen, ed. Sue Mosteller, C.S.J. (Doubleday, 2009)

Reviewed by Lois Sibley, a member of St. Peter’s Church, Glenside, Pa. This review originally appeared in Episcopal Life and is reprinted here with their kind permission.

Based on talks Henri gave at a three-day workshop for caregivers from L’Arche communities worldwide, Home Tonight encourages readers to listen as he relates his experiences of the healing he found as he sat in solitude with Rembrandt’s painting The Return of the Prodigal Son.

Nouwen, a Dutch theologian who died in 1996, shares how this was a vital part of his personal recovery from a difficult, emotional breakdown.

Nouwen gave a talk each morning at the workshop and then urged participants to find some quiet time to practice three ancient spiritual disciplines: listening, journaling and communing. His talks were not professionally recorded, but since his death, extracts have been assembled from previously published material.

Home Tonight includes a copy of Rembrandt’s famous work, painted near the end of the artist’s life. Nouwen encourages readers to sit with the painting, pondering, studying, reflecting, putting themselves into the scene.

He urges readers to “walk with me into the Gospel story” and focus on one detail that touches them more than the rest. “Read slowly,” he says. “Drink it in. Let it soak into your bones. Allow it to flow freely from your mind into your heart.”

Nouwen suggests that readers identify with each individual in the story, first with the younger son, then the older son and finally with the father. In the painting, the father touches his son and knows him. Nouwen emphasizes the importance of family, our first touch from our parents and the unconditional love of our God who created us and calls us home.

About three years after his workshop, Nouwen wrote a longer book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, which became very popular. But in Home Tonight, we have the opportunity to share with him the intimate details of his own inner journey home to God.

< Go back