KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 27 March
Be it unto me according to thy word
I know. You did not hear those words in the Scripture reading this week. You heard the parable of the prodigal son, the one who wasted his inheritance only to come to himself in a far-off country, poor and destitute, where he “comes to himself” and returns. It is a powerful story of homecoming.
It is captured in what is probably the last painting by Rembrandt called the Return of the Prodigal Son and which hangs in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, having been acquired almost a century later by Catherine the Great. The Return of the Prodigal Son is the title, too, of a wonderful meditation by Henri Nouwen about the painting and the parable as a story of homecoming. It is really all about the journey of our lives as embraced in God’s providential love.
You have all just returned from the March break. Some of you have, perhaps, gone to far-off places. I hope you weren’t left poor and destitute! You have now returned to the school, your alma mater or nursing mother with respect to intellectual and spiritual matters. We left just at the early beginnings of Lent and now return to find ourselves in mid-Lent in the patterns of spirituality and prayer that belong to the Christian understanding. In the Islamic world, this is the last week of Ramadan, equally a special time of prayer, fasting, reflection and responsibilities towards one’s community in the Islamic understanding. These religious themes contribute to our lives in community in our commitment to the ethical ideas of love and service.
But why this text, “be it unto me according to thy word”? Some of you will recognise that these are the words of Mary, the blessed Mother of our Lord, the theotokos or mother of God in the Christian teaching. What does it have to do with the idea of homecoming? What does homecoming mean? At the very least, it suggests a sense of purpose and connection about who we essentially are in our common humanity. But as the story of the prodigal son shows, homecoming belongs to who we are in the embrace of God’s love. The son who has rejected his father’s home and thus his father himself in going off to a distant country has forgotten who he is but “comes to himself” in a beautiful image of repentance.