Patreon<\/a> blog here at Patheos.\u00a0 These are more contemplative, reflective, and meditative in orientation.\u00a0 If these are helpful or interesting to you, please see my other Patreon posts.\u00a0 Here is a revised post:<\/em><\/p>\nIf we were to put aside the idea that hell is a geographical\/physical or even metaphysical\/spiritual realm, but rather a state of relative being, something we carry around in our hearts, the story of the Prodigal Son (St. Luke 15: 11-32) may help us see its location in how we respond to, or understand, our place in the Trinitarian economy, both temporally and eternally.<\/p>\n
This is a meditation and reflection.\u00a0 I\u2019m not positing something doctrinal or systematic.\u00a0 This is more a poetics, or more likely something aporetic.\u00a0 This is a speculative and alternative reading of the Prodigal Son for sure.\u00a0 Still, I\u2019m satisfied in my own mind and heart as to any conclusions.<\/p>\n
The story of the Prodigal Son is deeply subversive in many ways, but especially of all narratives that posit a certainty of salvation or lostness based upon temporal locations, of who is \u201cin\u201d and who is \u201cout\u201d of the father\u2019s, the god\u2019s, or the spirit\u2019s good graces and favor\u2014at any given moment in time.\u00a0 The story problematizes location (in various aspects) as being a certain or secure temporal foundation indicative of one\u2019s \u201csalvation\u201d or relation to the Father.<\/p>\n
The narrative also seems to suggest that while both sons represent two opposing relationships with the father, neither\u2019s actions, nor locations, overcomes the father\u2019s love for either son.\u00a0 Both are welcome to remain in the father\u2019s house; both sons are told they are loved.\u00a0 Therefore, the heaven or hell each experiences is within them\u2014it is not exterior to their actual circumstances of being loved and welcomed in the father\u2019s house.\u00a0 They are actualized only by their response to the father\u2019s love, but the father makes no other pronouncements or judgments upon his sons, other than those evidenced in his actions.<\/p>\n
First, the son who leaves.\u00a0 Yes, physically he leaves, but does the father\u2019s actions allow room for a deeper understanding of \u201cleaving?\u201d\u00a0 Since the father sees his son from far off, was he always looking for his return?\u00a0 Was he always scanning the horizon?\u00a0 His broken heart is now large enough to hold his son there.\u00a0 If love never fails, if love is the most important thing to remain (1 Cor: 13), then his son has not left, really.\u00a0 His son resides there, in the father\u2019s heart.\u00a0 Even though the son eventually feels he is in hell, he is not.\u00a0 He may be in the temporary purifying fires, but his true self is in heaven, his father\u2019s heart and home.<\/p>\n
Second, the son who remains.\u00a0 Yes, physically he remains at home.\u00a0 But notice he is not looking for his brother, like the father does.\u00a0 It would have been very upsetting to witness what his brother did and to live in the aftermath.\u00a0 We can almost feel his resentment and anger at his brother (We know this from his eventual response to his brother\u2019s returning).\u00a0 It is this anger and resentment that indicates he has left his father\u2019s home as well, if not his father\u2019s heart.\u00a0 He too wanders, even if at home physically.<\/p>\n
The son who leaves is many things.\u00a0 At the least, ignorant, impertinent, and immature.\u00a0 However, he doesn\u2019t seem to hold any anger or malice toward his father or brother.\u00a0 We aren\u2019t told why he leaves, but it doesn\u2019t seem to be for reasons of anger or hate.\u00a0 Thus, he too carries his father and brother in his heart\u2013even in the far country.<\/p>\n
It is difficult to say the same of the brother who remains.\u00a0 I wonder if in his anger and resentment, he had let his brother go (thus his true surprise at the return).\u00a0 If so, then it is he who has left and not his brother.\u00a0 To hold onto anger and resentment is to live in hell (which is to be in a far country and not home), regardless of one\u2019s physical surroundings\u2014even in the paradise of the father\u2019s home.\u00a0 To live in ignorance, but still hold onto one\u2019s love for father and brother, is to carry heaven around, regardless of one\u2019s physical surroundings and even in spite of one\u2019s short-sighted choices.<\/p>\n
We have two sons leaving and remaining in this story.\u00a0 We also have the circumstances of their leaving and remaining.\u00a0 However, we cannot locate (truthfully, ontologically, spiritually) either, based simply upon their physical location or temporal, finite circumstances or choices.\u00a0 We can only locate them in their response to each other (which holds the possibility of transcending the temporal and finite\u2014because love remains; or conversely, in resentment, the creation of a finite space for further purification).\u00a0 In that sense, we find the son who remains, had actually left and the son who left, had actually remained.<\/p>\n
Who then, is the prodigal?\u00a0 Who is \u201cin\u201d and who is \u201cout?\u201d\u00a0 We read:<\/p>\n
\u201cNow his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. \u00a0And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, \u2018Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.\u2019 But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Notice the \u201cin\u201d and \u201cout.\u201d\u00a0 The son who remained, now refuses to go \u201cin.\u201d\u00a0 He is outside<\/em> now.\u00a0 However, the father comes \u201cout.\u201d\u00a0 This love that refuses to let either son go, goes to each, wherever they are\u2014and \u201centreats\u201d them to come back \u201cin\u201d where they belong.\u00a0 Only we can stay outside\u2014the father doesn\u2019t put us there.\u00a0 Only we can go to a far country, the father doesn\u2019t send us there.<\/p>\nThus, the father\u2019s house is always open, and we are always welcome\u2014only we ourselves can prevent (and only to a point) our ingress to the place, if we ever come to ourselves, we know is home.\u00a0 Our ability to do so, is entirely bound up in relation and our response to relation and not in our temporal, finite, location or circumstances (whether physical of spiritual).\u00a0 Hell is about relation and response, not our temporal location or the circumstances of our finite choices.\u00a0 In this sense, the consequences of our failures in the areas of relation and response, are the finite fires (hell) of purification burning off that which prevents us from being in right relation, from seeing and seeking the Good.<\/p>\n
Thus, heaven and hell reside within and we carry each with us wherever we go, and they are activated or actualized by our response to the Father\u2019s love, but never the Father\u2019s judgment or command whether eternal predestination or pure absolute will in temporal time.\u00a0 If hell is an abode or structure of evil, then it is finite, as evil is not an ontological reality, but a privation, a shadow.\u00a0 Thus, it can never be determinative, into perpetuity, given our temporal, finite locations within the redemptive drama of creation and eschaton.\u00a0 And this would be true, regardless our temporal choices, because of the eternal love of the Father, which is the only ontological reality\u2014that which truly exists.<\/p>\n
However, in the summing up of all things, then we will find ourselves finally in the Father\u2019s house, where we were all along, in his heart.\u00a0 Now location, desire, the temporal, and the finite, will rest and join eternally in the peace, love, and infinite joy of the Father\u2019s presence\u2014which becomes our final and only \u201clocation\u201d or home.\u00a0 Where are hearts were always held, our glorified bodies will now join.\u00a0 Then, as St. Paul puts it:<\/p>\n
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell<\/em><\/p>\nAnd through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things<\/em><\/p>\nWhether on earth or in heaven by making peace through the blood of the cross<\/em> (Col 1:19)<\/p>\nWithout this reconciliation, we would have the possibility the father remains forever looking for the lost son, which would mean love fails and would posit something existing more powerful than love\u2014something as mundane as an immature, stubborn, and finite ignorance and will.\u00a0 It would also mean \u201call\u201d things doesn\u2019t really mean \u201call.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless hell and any purifying fires and judgment, which are no doubt part of our salvation, I believe Sergius Bulgakov was right: \u201cIt is impossible to appear before Christ and to see him without loving him.\u201d<\/p>\n
If a world existed, where the Father remains, eternally, looking for a son who never returns, then such a world would be a hell.\u00a0 It is our eternal praise that such a world was never created or, for that matter, even possible.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Periodically I plan to post reflections from my Patreon blog here at Patheos.\u00a0 These are more contemplative, reflective, and meditative in orientation.\u00a0 If these are helpful or interesting to you, please see my other Patreon posts.\u00a0 Here is a revised post: If we were to put aside the idea that hell is a geographical\/physical or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3524,"featured_media":1464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[182,245,774,771,434],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-heaven-and-hell","tag-love","tag-luke","tag-prodigal-son","tag-spiritual-direction"],"yoast_head":"\n
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