{"id":1521365,"date":"2022-06-18T01:19:06","date_gmt":"2022-06-18T05:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1521365"},"modified":"2022-06-18T01:19:36","modified_gmt":"2022-06-18T05:19:36","slug":"what-i-learned-from-my-father-about-the-prodigal-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/what-i-learned-from-my-father-about-the-prodigal-son\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Learned From My Father About The Prodigal Son"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhat-i-learned-from-my-father-about-the-prodigal-son%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1521365&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Screen-Shot-2022-06-16-at-12.11.44-PM-1024x658-1.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>\u201cWhen I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.\u201d So said Mark Twain, and so have felt countless sons. Well past twenty-one, I continue to be astonished at how much my old man has learned.<\/p>\n<p>A memory illustrates. Early last year, I was driving home from Mass with my family\u00a0on Sunday morning. There the readings had included the Gospel of Luke\u2019s parable of the prodigal son. It\u2019s the tale of the headstrong son who demanded and squandered his inheritance and then begged for forgiveness, his older brother who never rebelled, and the father who loved them both.<\/p>\n<p>I had always identified with the prodigal son, and figured everyone else did, too. This is partly due to my Irish heritage which, according to William Butler Yeats, means I have an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustains me through temporary periods of joy.<\/p>\n<p>I said this to my wife, Devin, as we drove home from church. She said she understood the sentiment,\u00a0but admitted at times feeling a certain kinship with the dutiful elder son.\u00a0We clearly had interpreted the lesson differently, which surprised me. I decided to consult my father to break the tie.<\/p>\n<p>I called him from the car, asking which character in the parable he identified with most. \u201cEasy,\u201d he answered. \u201cThe father.\u201d Believing God alone had been, well, perpetually cast in that role, I never thought picking the father was an option. It seemed my dad, when faced with multiple-choice options (a) or (b), was puckishly choosing (c) as a write-in answer. Or so I thought.<\/p>\n<p>Weeks later I shared the breezy exchange with Dr. William Muse of Knoxville, Tennessee.\u00a0Muse, a contemporary of my father, is a dear friend whom I figured could use a smile. We were together in Dallas where he was tending to his daughter, Amanda, who was dying of cancer. Sad of heart but undaunted in his Catholic faith, he somehow found time to counsel me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRead this,\u201d he said, pitching me Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen\u2019s spiritual classic \u201cThe Return of the Prodigal Son.\u201d It\u2019s a meditation inspired by the author\u2019s response to a reproduction of Rembrandt\u2019s eponymous and hauntingly beautiful painting. How strange the book was there in Amanda\u2019s bookcase, my own poor man\u2019s\u00a0<em>tolle lege\u00a0<\/em>experience<em>.\u00a0<\/em>\u201cYour dad is not wrong. None of you are.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I devoured the book. It taught me that while we tend to be each actor \u2014 prodigal son, elder son, even the father \u2014 at different stages of life, we ultimately\u00a0are called to progress to\u00a0spiritual fatherhood. That is, we\u2019re called to love one another exactly as the compassionate father did, with self-emptying hearts of mercy. <\/p>\n<p>After all, neither the justice the prodigal son demanded nor the justice the elder son expected ultimately satisfies. Knowing this, the father gave his heirs freely and fully not the mere justice they sought but the far greater mercy they needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Justice may even the scales, but in mercy, the world is remade anew.\u00a0As a broken world, so a penitent man.\u00a0As we need merciful forgiveness, so must we grant it. As we are loved by God, so must we try to love one another. For nothing you have not given away, as C.S. Lewis wrote, will ever really be yours.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, in the parable of the prodigal son we are, in fact, called to identify with the father, just like my old man said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A Dutch painter inspired a fellow countryman priest centuries later, whose book helped a Tennessee doctor explain the true meaning\u00a0of fatherhood to a North Carolina lawyer, but make no mistake. I was once again astonished at how much my old man had learned.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Mike Kerrigan is an attorney in Charlotte, N.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhen I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":581,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1521365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/581"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1521365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1521365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1521365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1521365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}