“ And behold, I am with you always…”
We’ve grown so overly familiar with Bible quotes, we sometimes miss their stunning affirmation of Good News. Jesus’ last reassurance in today’s gospel aligns with what I’ve been reading in a book called Home Tonight by Henri Nouwen. I’d read his classic Return of the Prodigal Son many years ago, and often used the combination of Rembrandt’s art and Nouwen’s interpretation of it in talks and retreats. Hallmarks of that art are the concentration of light in the Father, his hands touching his woebegone son’s shoulder, one hand masculine, one hand feminine, his red cape framing them like a Gothic arch.
Nouwen began working on the material for Return more than three years before its publication. He’d suffered a breakdown during his second year at L’Arche, spent seven months in solitude, then gave a three-day workshop on what he’d learned from that time alone with the Gospel and the painting. That workshop formed the basis for Home Tonight.
Nouwen points out there that Jesus never said, “I know God fully; you can know a little.” Or “I can do great things in God’s name; you can maybe do a few.” Instead, there is a full outpouring of all God’s rich presence into us. We can enjoy the same relationship of unconditional love with our Father that Jesus had with his. Jesus shows us “a union so total and so full that there is not even the slightest place for an experience of absence or separation.” (p. 94) As I have frequently quoted Julian of Norwich, “between God and the soul, there is no between.”
Why then do we wander off track, so quickly forgetting God’s yearning to be in us and with us? We know “we have not here a lasting city,” no permanent security. We get busy, stressed, anxious and tired, missing the signals that surround us: music, laughter, health, surprises, the clean curve of a bird’s silhouette against the sky, books and nature swelling with beauty, the ordinary efforts of family and friends, delicate threads elegantly woven into the skein of life. We want the promise to be more visible, audible, tangible. But we mustn’t miss the faint signals, unique to each person, which Nouwen calls “a fleeting taste of home on the way home.” (p. 90)
Kathy Coffey 