By Madden High
Prodigal (adj):
- spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant
- having or giving something on a lavish scale
Since Christianity’s earliest days, one parable has dominated the collective imagination of believers through its exquisite imagery and beautiful simplicity: The Parable of the Prodigal Son and His Brother. Upon observation, surprising parallels appear between Christ and the Prodigal Son in the parable, and in this article, I’d like to point out how the Prodigal Son’s journey starkly mirrors Christ’s and draw out the richness in such a parallel. Such an exercise is fruitful because it discloses both similarities and differences, with the differences unveiling the similarity’s deeper meanings. And although it may initially seem strange to compare Jesus with someone so sinful as the son presented in the parable, it is helpful to remember that our tradition has always engaged in such activities (think of Jonah, Solomon, or the untrustworthiness of shepherds). In any case, I’d like to begin laying out the parallels and differences between Christ and the Prodigal to see how the Prodigal serves as a Christ-type.
The parable begins:
11 Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living.
Within the parable’s first two verses, the parallel between the younger son and Christ emerges—though at this point only marginally—for in the very first verse, the text establishes that the Prodigal Son has a Father, and by the third verse, he takes his inheritance and goes out into the world, leaving his father behind. In Christ, something similar occurs. Christ too is the Son of a Father, and although he goes out into the world, it is not as one who has taken his inheritance but as one sent by the Father as His messenger. Christ does not leave the Father but is sent forth by Him, like a Word spoken to humanity. From these verses the critical difference between Christ and the Prodigal Son materializes: while the Prodigal Son selfishly takes what is his and leaves his father, Christ is sent forth by the Father as his messenger, doing only the Father’s will in the world (John 5:19). Christ’s role as messenger ensures that He constantly remains in relation with the Father because His journey into creation is in obedience to His Father’s will. In contrast, the Prodigal Son’s journey into the world is entirely separate from his father. It is ultimately a descent into himself and away from the man who loves him.
Likewise, verse 13 also offers a crucial parallel, for in verse 13, the Prodigal Son’s prodigality comes to light, mirroring Christ’s self-giving throughout his life and on the cross. We read that the son squanders all his property. He has nothing left. What did he squander it on? Verses 13 and 30 tell us that it was on “loose living” and “harlots.” Who did Christ spend his time with upon his entrance into the world? Christ spends his time with prostitutes and tax collectors, but unlike the Prodigal Son, who did so for his own enjoyment, Christ’s relationship with them is self-giving. He heals them, nurtures them, provides them a new way of life, and unites them with his expedition into the world. However, this journey ultimately ends in Christ’s total self-giving, his giving of everything. In the end, Christ gives it all, “spending” everything He has, even going so far as to expend His life for tax collectors and prostitutes. Here Christ emerges as the true “Prodigal” Son who lavishly spends Himself for others. The words of Joseph Ratzinger are constructive here. He says in his Introduction to Christianity:
Excess is God’s trademark in his creation; as the Fathers put it, “God does not reckon his gifts by the measure.” At the same time excess is also the real foundation and form of salvation history, which in the last analysis is nothing other than the truly breathtaking fact that God, in an incredible outpouring of himself, expends not only a universe but his own self in order to lead man, a speck of dust, to salvation. So excess or superfluity – let us repeat – is the real definition or mark of the history of salvation. The purely calculating mind will always find it absurd that for man God himself should be expended. Only the lover can understand the folly of a love to which prodigality is a law and excess alone is sufficient. Yet if it is true that the creation lives from excess or superfluity, that man is a being for whom excess is necessity, how can we wonder that revelation is the superfluous and for that very reason the necessary, the divine, the love in which the meaning of the universe is fulfilled? (p. 262)
Christ’s entire mission exhibits God’s “prodigality,” for in it, the creature man sees the lengths to which his Creator will go to reach out and embrace him in His arms. God did not need to enter the world, expend his life, or join us in our suffering, but He did. He went beyond necessity and into excess, and in doing so, he reveals the extravagance of His love for us. He holds nothing back.
Furthermore, both the Prodigal Son and Christ, after spending everything they have, feel the weight of isolation from their father. Where does the Prodigal Son find himself after squandering his living? He now feeds swine and longs to eat their food. He is lonely and pines for the comfort of his father’s home. Realizing life’s quality in his father’s house, the Prodigal Son desires to return once more, even if only as a servant. Similarly, Christ, at his self-giving’s most significant moment, finds Himself crucified by pagans and stripped totally naked. There he cries out, “Eli, Eli, lama sabach-thani, that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matthew 27:46). As Christ unreservedly spends himself and gives his life for the world, he cries out in loneliness to the Father. To paraphrase Ratzinger, it is a cry from the depths of hell, from the depths of the human loneliness, a loneliness which he eventually endures to its extreme: death itself. (Introduction to Christianity, 293-301). On the cross, He walks into the “night into whose solitude no voice reaches,” the “door through which we can only walk alone—the door of death.” (Introduction to Christianity, 301).
Yet for both the Prodigal Son and Christ, the deep loneliness and desire for their fathers ultimately ends with a glorious reunion, one where each father triumphantly receives his son and ornaments him. What happens to the Prodigal Son after he returns to the father? Upon the Prodigal son’s return, the father rejoices and adorns him with his finest robes. Likewise, what happens when Christ, having brought humanity into himself and joined them in their godforsakeness, takes the ultimate plunge into death and gives Himself entirely to the Father? He is glorified and adorned with new life. All authority in heaven and on earth is given over to him. Christ obliterates the darkness into which he plunged and prevails over it, for death’s loneliness cannot contain so pure an act of love as Christ’s selfless deed on the Cross. If Christ is not raised to glorified life, his descent means nothing, but his resurrection into new life takes human pain and suffering and absorbs it into the divine life. There is no longer any darkness into which His light does not shine. Christ’s resurrection and adorning with new life both point to humanity’s final end while also enveloping our current life and giving it a new direction.
As a final touch, after giving him new robes, the father celebrates the son’s return by killing the fattened calf and holding a great feast. Who cannot see here the allusion to that great feast we now observe in all places and all times commemorating Christ’s great sacrifice? For Christ left us with that great banquet, the “Wedding Feast of the Lamb,” so that we might celebrate that monumental act of self-giving to the ends of time. Now, the great prodigal act of Jesus, a sublime sacrifice so sweet to behold, eternally present in the heavenly sanctuary, becomes present to us day by day at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is there that we celebrate the extravagant sacrifice of Our Prodigal Jesus.
Finally, it would be remiss to perform an exegesis of this passage without mentioning the older brother. He’s a solitary figure, standing in the fields and watching the celebration from the outside, refusing to enter. Despite the Prodigal Son’s astonishing return, the older brother thinks only of himself. Though spatially near the father, the older brother remains just as distant from him as the Prodigal Son did while eating pig slop, for he too has rotated wholly inward and descended into himself. Interestingly, the older son never actively approaches the father but only speaks to him when the father engages first and requests that he join the banquet. The offer to go inside stands before the older brother, but his choice remains unseen. The parable ends before he makes his decision.
Here, we see the older brother, insulated and isolated, turned entirely inward and refusing to reach out to the father despite the father’s offer to join the feast. The older son must make a choice. He can either go inside or remain away from the celebration. The extension of an offer and the son’s responsibility to respond presents him as a man under judgment, echoing passages such as the Gospel of John’s third chapter: “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (vv. 19-20). The offer to go inside stands before the older son, and he must now choose what direction to go. Here, he mirrors all of humanity, for “Man is under judgment and must choose.” (Balthasaar, Dare We Hope, 6). We all stand under God’s judgment. Christ’s salvific light now shines into the world, but we must loosen our white knuckled grip on darkness if we are to be washed in Christ’s sanctifying rays. Our selfward turn must reverse Godward, allowing his light to destroy our interior darkness.
Seeing that the older brother’s state reflects our own, a new parallel comes into focus, given that the older brother is the firstborn of the sons. The older brother represents “Adam” in the broader sense, i.e., he represents humanity, self-centered and plagued by death. However, just as “many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many….” (Romans 5:15). Christ’s self-giving act of love burns in man’s direction, calling him to leave behind his old ways and let go of himself. Should the older brother accept the father’s invitation and join the revelry, we’d see another lovely image of heavenly harmony. But if he rejects the offer and remains outside, finalizing his refusal to enter the father’s house, we’d see an embodiment of the ceaseless solitude known as hell.
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