Parable of the Prodigal Son

The Parable of the Prodigal Son (also known as the parable of the Two Brothers, Lost Son, Loving Father, or of the Forgiving Father; Greek: Παραβολή του Ασώτου Υιού, romanized: Parabolē tou Asōtou Huiou) is one of the parables of Jesus in the Bible, appearing in Luke 15:11–32. In Luke 15, Jesus tells this story, along with those of a man with 100 sheep and a woman with ten coins, to a group of Pharisees and religious leaders who criticized him for welcoming and eating with tax collectors and others seen as sinners.
The Prodigal Son is the third and final parable of a cycle on redemption, following the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin. In the Revised Common Lectionary and Roman Rite Catholic Lectionary, this parable is read on the fourth Sunday of Lent (in Year C); in the latter it is also included in the long form of the Gospel on the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time in Year C, along with the preceding two parables of the cycle. In the Eastern Orthodox Church it is read on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son.
The parable begins with a wealthy man who has two sons, the younger of whom asks for his share of the man's estate. The implication is that the son did not want to wait for his father's death to receive his inheritance but instead wanted it immediately. The father agrees and divides his estate between the two sons.
Upon receiving his portion of the inheritance, the younger son travels to a distant country, where he squanders his wealth through reckless living. He runs out of money just before a severe famine strikes the land, leaving him desperately poor and forced to take a filthy and low-paying job as a swineherd. He reaches the point of envying the food of the pigs he is feeding. At this time, he finally comes to his senses:
This implies that the father was watching hopefully for the son's return. The son starts his rehearsed speech, admitting his sins, and declaring himself unworthy of being his father's son but does not even finish before his father accepts him back without hesitation. The father calls for his servants to dress the son in the finest robe and put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet and to slaughter the "fatted calf" for a celebratory meal.
The older son, who was at work in the fields, hears the sound of celebration and is told by a slave about the return of his younger brother. He is not impressed and becomes angry. He also has a speech for his father:
The parable stops with the father explaining that while the older son has always been present and that everything the father owns also belongs to the older son, because the younger son had returned, in a sense, from the dead, celebration was necessary:
The opening, "A man had two sons" is a storyteller's trope and would immediately bring to mind Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, and Jacob and Esau. Jesus then confounds the listeners' expectations when the younger son is shown to be foolish.
While a number of commentators see the request of the younger son for his share of the inheritance as "brash, even insolent" and "tantamount to wishing that the father was dead," Jewish legal scholar Bernard Jackson says "Jewish sources give no support to [the idea] that the prodigal, in seeking the advance, wishes his father dead."
The young man's actions do not lead to success; he squanders his inheritance and he eventually becomes an indentured servant, with the degrading job of looking after pigs, and even envying them for the carob pods they eat. This recalls Proverbs 29:3: "Whoever loves wisdom gives joy to his father, but whoever consorts with harlots squanders his wealth."
Upon his return, his father treats the young man with a generosity far more than he has a right to expect. He is given the best robe, a ring for his finger, and sandals for his feet. Jewish philosopher Philo observes:
The Pesikta Rabbati has a similar story:
The older son, in contrast, seems to think in terms of "law, merit, and reward," rather than "love and graciousness." He may represent the Pharisees who were criticizing Jesus.
Leviticus Rabbah 13:4 also contains a short saying that matches the character of the parable:
The last few verses of the parable summarize the tale in accordance with the Jewish teaching of the two ways of acting: the way of life (obedience) and the way of death (sin). God, according to Judaism, rejoices over and grants more graces to repentant sinners than righteous souls who do not need repentance.
Following the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin, this is the last of three parables about loss and redemption that Jesus tells after the Pharisees and religious leaders accuse him of welcoming and eating with "sinners." The father's joy described in the parable reflects divine love: the "boundless mercy of God," and "God's refusal to limit the measure of his grace."
Justus Knecht, like others, breaks this parable into three parts, noting that, "The father in the parable signifies God; the elder son, the just; and the younger son, the sinner." In the first part:
Roger Baxter in his Meditations describes the second part:
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the parable of the Prodigal Son is central to the Christian understanding emphasizing God's boundless love for humanity. Archpriest Victor Potapov encapsulates this as "a multitude of themes...difficult to enumerate", including the historical contrast between God's chosen people and the pagans, the nature of sin (one reason why the parable is read on the third Sunday before Great Lent, also including the subsequent fasting time to encourage spiritual discipline and refreshment), and the process and blessings of repentance. The Father's forgiving embrace represents God's joy in receiving sinners who return to Him with humility and remorse. It is as an allegory of the Church, with elements like baptism and the Eucharist symbolized through the Father's gifts to his son.
As Fr. Potapov cites, Saint Theophan the Recluse compares the sinner with a man sunk into a deep sleep, and in his turning to God he notes three psychological moments that correspond to the parable's events: 1. Awakening from the sleep of sin (Luke 15:17); 2. The ripening of resolve to forsake sin and dedicate himself to pleasing God (Luke 15:17–21); 3. Investing the sinner with divine power for this in the "Mysteries of Repentance and Communion".
Fr. James Guirguis puts the message in both plainspoken terms, yet also quoting Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk:
The Eastern Orthodox Church traditionally reads this story on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, which in their liturgical year is the Sunday before Meatfare Sunday and about two weeks before the beginning of Great Lent. One common kontakion hymn of the occasion reads:
In his 1984 apostolic exhortation titled, in Latin, Reconciliatio et paenitentia ('Reconciliation and Penance'), Pope John Paul II used this parable to explain the process of conversion and reconciliation. Emphasizing that God the Father is "rich in mercy" and always ready to forgive, he stated that reconciliation is a "gift on his part". He stated that for the Church her "mission of reconciliation is the initiative, full of compassionate love and mercy, of that God who is love." He also explored the issues raised by this parable in his second encyclical, Dives in misericordia ('Rich in Mercy'), issued in 1980.
Of the roughly 30 parables in the canonical Gospels, the Parable of the Prodigal Son was one of four that were shown in medieval art—along with that of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the Dives and Lazarus, and the Good Samaritan—almost to the exclusion of the others, though not mixed in with the narrative scenes of the Life of Christ. (The Laborers in the Vineyard also appears in Early Medieval works.)
Scenes of the prodigal son were a popular subject in Northern Renaissance art. Albrecht Dürer's 1496 engraving is a famous example. In the seventeenth-century, Rembrandt depicted several scenes from the parable, especially the final episode, which he etched, drew, or painted on several occasions during his career. At least one of Rembrandt's works—The Prodigal Son in the Tavern, is a portrait of himself as the son reveling with his wife.
The Prodigal Son is a sculpture in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, by George Grey Barnard that depicts the loving reunion of the father and son from the "Parable of the Prodigal Son."
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the theme was such a sufficiently popular subject that the 'Prodigal Son play' can be seen as a subgenre of the English morality play. Examples include The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, The Disobedient Child, and Acolastus.
The parable is referenced in the last verse of the traditional Irish folk tune "The Wild Rover":
"Jump Around" by the Los Angeles rap group House of Pain (1992) includes a verse by member Everlast, who references the parable as well as the Bible itself:
Another literary tribute to this parable is Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen's 1992 book, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming, in which he describes his own spiritual journey infused with understanding, based on an encounter with Rembrandt's painting that depicts the son's return. The book deals with three personages: the younger, prodigal son; the self-righteous, resentful older son; and the compassionate father—all of whom the author identifies with personally. An earlier work with similarities to the parable is "Le retour de l'enfant prodigue" ('The Return of the Prodigal Son'), a short story by André Gide.
Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem giving an interpretation of the younger brother's perspective. The poem appears as the heading to the fifth chapter, titled "The Prodigal Son", of his 1901 novel Kim.
The Parable is a recurring theme in the works of Rainer Maria Rilke, who interpreted it in a different way to the conventional reading. Rilke's version is not so concerned with redemption and the forgiveness of family: the love of the family, and human love in general, was seen as less worthy than unreciprocated love, which is the purest form of love. In loving the family less, the Son can love God more, even if this love is not returned.
The theme of the Prodigal Son plays a major role in Anne Tyler's novel A Spool of Blue Thread.
The parable is also referred to in two comedies by William Shakespeare, specifically The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It, as well as in Shakespeare's romance, The Winter's Tale.
In one of his clemency petitions to the Bombay Presidency in 1913, the Indian independence activist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar described himself as a "prodigal son" longing to return to the "parental doors of the government".
A parable of a lost son can also be found in the Mahayana Buddhist Lotus Sutra. The two parables share the premise of a father and son being reunited after a time apart, and several scholars have assumed that one version has influenced the other or that both texts share a common origin. However, an influence of the biblical story on the Lotus sutra is very unlikely given the early dating of the stratum of the sutra containing the Buddhist parable.
Both parables document a son who leaves a father. In the Lotus sutra, there is a lapse of decades after which the poor son no longer recognises his wealthy father and is terrified of his father's accumulated power and wealth. When the father sends out some attendants to welcome the son, the son panics. The father then lets the son leave without telling him of their kinship, providing him with a heap of straw to sleep on and employment clearing a pile of dirt.
As the decades pass, the father gradually conditions the son to his company and gets him accustomed to special honors. Close to death, the wealthy man reveals his kinship with a public announcement to the whole community. The sutra applies the story to the human quest for omniscience which is unexpectedly received. In the Buddhist parable, the father symbolises the Buddha, and the son symbolises any human being. Their kinship symbolises that any being has Buddha nature. The concealment of the kinship of the father to his son is regarded as a skillful means (Sanskrit: upāya).