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Chapter 1

Rembrandt and the Younger Son

Rembrandt was close to his death when he painted his Prodigal Son. Most likely it was one of Rembrandt’s last works. The more I read about it and look at it, the more I see it as a final statement of a tumultuous and tormented life. Together with his unfinished painting Simeon and the Child Jesus, the Prodigal Son shows the painter’s perception of his aged self--a perception in which physical blindness and a deep inner seeing are intimately connected. The way in which the old Simeon holds the vulnerable child and the way in which the old father embraces his exhausted son reveal an inner vision that reminds one of Jesus’ words to his disciples: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.” Both Simeon and the father of the returning son carry within themselves that mysterious light by which they see. It is an inner light, deeply hidden, but radiating an all-pervasive tender beauty.

This inner light, however, had remained hidden for a long time. For many years it remained unreachable for Rembrandt. Only gradually and through much anguish did he come to know that light within himself and, through himself, in those he painted. Before being like the father, Rembrandt was for a long time like the proud young man who “got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he squandered his money.”

When I look at the profoundly interiorized self-portraits which Rembrandt produced during his last years and which explain much of his ability to paint the luminous old father and the old Simeon, I must not forget that, as a young man, Rembrandt had all the characteristics of the prodigal son: brash, self-confident, spendthrift, sensual, and very arrogant. At the age of thirty, he painted himself with his wife, Saskia, as the lost son in a brothel. No interiority is visible there. Drunk, with his half-open mouth and sexually greedy eyes, he glares scornfully at those who look at his portrait as if to say: “Isn’t this a lot of fun!” With his right hand he lifts up a half-empty glass, while with his left he touches the lower back of his girl whose eyes are no less lustful than his own. Rembrandt’s long, curly hair, his velvet cap with the huge white feather, and the leather-sheathed sword with golden hilt touching the backs of the two merrymakers leave little doubt about their intentions. The drawn curtain in the upper right corner even makes one think of the brothels in Amsterdam’s infamous red-light district. Gazing intently at this sensuous self-portrait of the young Rembrandt as the prodigal son, I can scarcely believe that this is the same man who, thirty years later, painted himself with eyes that penetrate so deeply into the hidden mysteries of life.

Still, all the Rembrandt biographers describe him as a proud young man, strongly convinced of his own genius and eager to explore everything the world has to offer; an extrovert who loves luxury and is quite insensitive toward those about him. There is no doubt that one of Rembrandt’s main concerns was money. He made a lot, he spent a lot, and he lost a lot. A large part of his energy was wasted in long, drawn-out court cases about financial settlements and bankruptcy proceedings. The self-portraits painted during his late twenties and early thirties reveal Rembrandt as a man hungry for fame and adulation, fond of extravagant costumes, preferring golden chains to the traditional starched white collars, and sporting outlandish hats, berets, helmets, and turbans. Although much of this elaborate dressing-up can be explained as a normal way to practice and show off painting techniques, it also demonstrates an arrogant character who wasn’t simply out to please his sponsors.

However, this short period of success, popularity, and wealth is followed by much grief, misfortune, and disaster. Trying to summarize the many misfortunes of Rembrandt’s life can be overwhelming. They are not unlike those of the prodigal son. After having lost his son Rumbartus in 1635, his first daughter Cornelia in 1638, and his second daughter Cornelia in 1640, Rembrandt’s wife Saskia, whom he deeply loved and admired, dies in 1642. Rembrandt is left behind with his nine-month-old son, Titus. After Saskia’s death, Rembrandt’s life continues to be marked with countless pains and problems. A very unhappy relationship with Titus’ nurse, Geertje Dircx, ending in lawsuits and the confinement of Geertje in an asylum, is followed by a more stable union with Hendrickje Stoffels. She bears him a son who dies in 1652 and a daughter, Cornelia, the only child who will survive him. 

During these years, Rembrandt’s popularity as a painter plummeted, even though some collectors and critics continued to recognize him as one of the greatest painters of the time. His financial problems became so severe that in 1656 Rembrandt is declared insolvent and asks for the right to sign over all his property and effects for the benefit of his creditors to avoid bankruptcy. All of Rembrandt’s possessions, his own and other painters’ works, his large collection of artifacts, his house in Amsterdam and his furniture, are sold in three auctions during 1657 and 1658.

Although Rembrandt would never become completely free of debt and debtors, in his early fifties he is able to find a modicum of peace. The increasing warmth and interiority of his paintings during this period show that the many disillusionments did not embitter him. On the contrary, they had a purifying effect on his way of seeing. Jakob Rosenberg writes: “He began to regard man and nature with an even more penetrating eye, no longer distracted by outward splendor or theatrical display.” In 1663, Hendrickje dies, and five years later, Rembrandt witnesses not only the marriage but also the death of his beloved son, Titus. When Rembrandt himself dies in 1669, he has become a poor and lonely man. Only his daughter Cornelia, his daughter-in-law Magdalene van Loo, and his granddaughter Titia survived him.

As I look at the prodigal son kneeling before his father and pressing his face against his chest, I cannot but see there the once so self-confident and venerated artist who has come to the painful realization that all the glory he had gathered for himself proved to be vain glory. Instead of the rich garments with which the youthful Rembrandt painted himself in the brothel, he now wears only a torn undertunic covering his emaciated body, and the sandals, in which he had walked so far, have become worn out and useless.

Moving my eyes from the repentant son to the compassionate father, I see that the glittering light reflecting from golden chains, harnesses, helmets, candles, and hidden lamps has died out and been replaced by the inner light of old age. It is the movement from the glory that seduces one into an ever greater search for wealth and popularity to the glory that is hidden in the human soul and surpasses death.

 
Chapter 2

The Younger Son Leaves

The younger one said to his father, “Father, let me have the share of the estate that will come to me.” So the father divided the property between them. A few days later, the younger son got together everything he had and left for a distant country.

A Radical Rejection

The full title of Rembrandt’s painting is, as has been said, Return of the Prodigal Son. Implicit in the “return” is a leaving. Returning is a homecoming after a home-leaving, a coming back after having gone away. The father who welcomes his son home is so glad because this son “was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found.” The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides the immense sorrow that has gone before. The finding has the losing in the background, the returning has the leaving under its cloak. Looking at the tender and joy-filled return, I have to dare to taste the sorrowful events that preceded it. Only when I have the courage to explore in depth what it means to leave home, can I come to a true understanding of the return. The soft yellow-brown of the son’s underclothes looks beautiful when seen in rich harmony with the red of the father’s cloak, but the truth of the matter is that the son is dressed in rags that betray the great misery that lies behind him. In the context of a compassionate embrace, our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.

To understand deeply the mystery of compassion, I have to look honestly at the reality that evokes it. The fact is that, long before turning and returning, the son left. He said to his father, “Let me have the share of the estate that will come to me,” then he got together everything he had received and left. The evangelist Luke tells it all so simply and so matter-of-factly that it is difficult to realize fully that what is happening here is an unheard-of event: hurtful, offensive, and in radical contradiction to the most venerated tradition of the time. Kenneth Bailey, in his penetrating explanation of Luke’s story, shows that the son’s manner of leaving is tantamount to wishing his father dead. Bailey writes: 

For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has always been emphatically the same . . . the conversation runs as follows:

Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?

Never!

Could anyone ever make such a request?

Impossible!

If anyone ever did, what would happen?

His father would beat him, of course!

Why?

The request means--he wants his father to die.

Bailey explains that the son asks not only for the division of the inheritance, but also for the right to dispose of his part. “After signing over his possessions to his son, the father still has the right to live off the proceeds . . . as long as he is alive. Here the younger son gets, and thus is assumed to have demanded, disposition to which, even more explicitly, he has no right until the death of his father. The implication of ‘Father, I cannot wait for you to die’ underlies both requests.”

The son’s “leaving” is, therefore, a much more offensive act than it seems at first reading. It is a heartless rejection of the home in which the son was born and nurtured and a break with the most precious tradition carefully upheld by the larger community of which he was a part. When Luke writes, “and left for a distant country,” he indicates much more than the desire of a young man to see more of the world. He speaks about a drastic cutting loose from the way of living, thinking, and acting that has been handed down to him from generation to generation as a sacred legacy. More than disrespect, it is a betrayal of the treasured values of family and community. The “distant country” is the world in which everything considered holy at home is disregarded. 

This explanation is significant to me, not only because it provides me with an accurate understanding of the parable in its historical context, but also--and most of all--because it summons me to recognize the younger son in myself. At first it seemed hard to discover in my own life’s journey such a defiant rebellion. Rejecting the values of my own heritage is not part of the way I think of myself. But when I look carefully at the many more or less subtle ways I have preferred the distant country to the home close by, the younger son quickly emerges. I am speaking here about a spiritual “leaving home”--as quite distinct from the mere physical fact that I have spent most of my years outside my beloved Holland.

More than any other story in the Gospel, the parable of the prodigal son expresses the boundlessness of God’s compassionate love. And when I place myself in that story under the light of that divine love, it becomes painfully clear that leaving home is much closer to my spiritual experience than I might have thought.

Rembrandt’s painting of the father welcoming his son displays scarcely any external movement. In contrast to his 1636 etching of the prodigal son--full of action, the father running to the son and the son throwing himself at his father’s feet--the Hermitage painting, made about thirty years later, is one of utter stillness. The father’s touching the son is an everlasting blessing; the son resting against his father’s breast is an eternal peace. Christian Tümpel writes: “The moment of receiving and forgiving in the stillness of its composition lasts without end. The movement of the father and the son speaks of something that passes not, but lasts forever.” Jakob Rosenberg summarizes this vision beautifully when he writes: “The group of father and son is outwardly almost motionless, but inwardly all the more moved . . . the story deals not with the human love of an earthly father . . . what is meant and represented here is the divine love and mercy in its power to transform death into life.” 

Deaf to the Voice of Love

Leaving home is, then, much more than an historical event bound to time and place. It is a denial of the spiritual reality that I belong to God with every part of my being, that God holds me safe in an eternal embrace, that I am indeed carved in the palms of God’s hands and hidden in their shadows. Leaving home means ignoring the truth that God has “fashioned me in secret, moulded me in the depths of the earth and knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look far and wide to find one. 

Home is the center of my being where I can hear the voice that says: “You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests”--the same voice that gave life to the first Adam and spoke to Jesus, the second Adam; the same voice that speaks to all the children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light. I have heard that voice. It has spoken to me in the past and continues to speak to me now. It is the never-interrupted voice of love speaking from eternity and giving life and love whenever it is heard. When I hear that voice, I know that I am home with God and have nothing to fear. As the Beloved of my heavenly Father, “I can walk in the valley of darkness: no evil would I fear.” As the Beloved, I can “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils.” Having “received without charge,” I can “give without charge.” As the Beloved, I can confront, console, admonish, and encourage without fear of rejection or need for affirmation. As the Beloved, I can suffer persecution without desire for revenge and receive praise without using it as a proof of my goodness. As the Beloved, I can be tortured and killed without ever having to doubt that the love that is given to me is stronger than death. As the Beloved, I am free to live and give life, free also to die while giving life.