The Brother of the Prodigal Son
By Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol
By Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol
The Parable of the Prodigal Son is enough in itself to teach us the whole mystery of the Father's divine love and the way of salvation and of the return of people to God. Thus, usually, greater importance is given to the prodigal son and the way of his salvation, but also to the presence of the Father, who with His ineffable fatherly love accepts his prodigal son back. However, the other son, the prodigal's brother, remains on the sidelines, without anyone dealing with him. When I therefore hear this parable, my mind remains on this type of man, because I feel that we "religious" people are most like him.
We are in danger from the syndrome of this man. It is a great danger that lurks for all of us. In the Gospel, the eldest son is mentioned in a few words.
When the prodigal son returned and was welcomed by his father and ordered that the best robe be brought to clothe him, and that the fattened calf be sacrificed and that there should be joy and gladness in the house, because the prodigal was like a dead man who has survived, who was lost and is now found, the parable continues: “Now his elder son was in the field.”
The older son was in the field working on his father’s business. “And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing,” and when he arrived at the house he heard the whole story. What the above moment refers us to, which is written about the prodigal son, is that when he returned and approached the house, even while he was still a long way off, his father ran and embraced him and kissed him and “fell on his neck.” “And when the father saw him, he was moved with compassion.” Saint John Chrysostom says a beautiful thing about this: “How did the father see him, since he was afar off?” The father’s eyes have a great gaze and great power. He saw him with the eyes of his soul, with his love and his compassion.
Thus we see two scenes: one son when he approaches, his father receives him and kisses him and comforts him and dresses him in the finest robe, while the other son as soon as he hears the dancing and singing in the house, he calls one of his servants and wants to know what is happening. He was disturbed, he did not like it. The servant told him that his brother had returned and that his father had sacrificed the fattened calf, because he had received him and accepted him alive and healthy. Then the brother “became angry and would not go in,” he was so angry that he did not want to even go into the house. “His father came out and pleaded with him.” Then the father came out again, as before, to welcome the other prodigal, and he begged and pleaded with him to come into the house.
But he said to his father: “Lo, these many years I have been serving you, and I never disobeyed your command, and you never even gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours, who has devoured your living with harlots, came back, you killed the fattened calf for him.” Then the father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. Rejoice and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive again, he was lost and has been found.” This is the text of the passage that refers to the second son.
Indeed, I think that, if one wants to feel sorry for someone in this story, inevitably and worthy of many tears is the other son, the older brother. He is worthy of tears, because in the end he did not really live with the father, did not commune with the father, nor did he rejoice, nor did he understand his father. Here is the great tragedy, that this child behaved like this. Because essentially he never understood his father.
He was with him for so many years, as he himself boasted: "Lo, these many years I have been serving you, and I never disobeyed your command, and you never even gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends." The tragedy lies in this point. That is, in that for so many years he did not understand which father he had by his side. The prodigal, while committing so many sins, seems to have discovered his father in his heart at some point. But when he was suffering and hungry and was feeding pigs and eating from their food, everyone had abandoned him and no one paid him any attention. Being in this complete misery and rejection and abandonment, there he remembered his father's house. He found himself and decided to go back to his house. He did this because he knew who his father was. He was certain that, if he went back, his father would accept him, and he would say to him: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants."
This was the key that opened the father's heart. But he knew the father and the way to speak to him. The elder brother unfortunately did not know this. He never understood his father.
Indeed, I think that, if one wants to feel sorry for anyone in this story, inevitably and worthy of many tears is the other son, the elder brother. He is worthy of tears, because in the end he did not truly live with the father, did not commune with the father, nor did he rejoice, nor did he understand his father.
And for ourselves today it is a tragedy, when we see people in the Church who work, like all of us, in spiritual work, struggling spiritually, reading, fasting, praying and doing all these things, but have an incomprehensible behavior: as if they had never heard and seen God before them and never understood the Gospel, as if it were something unknown to them.
And someone says, how is it possible for a person to be in the Church for so many years, to commune, to pray and to have hardness and a state in his soul which has nothing to do with Christ? Why do we suffer this? Why do we suffer what the eldest son suffered? We get the idea that "Lo, these many years I have been serving you, and I never disobeyed your command." I have been a servant of God for so many years, I have never disobeyed a commandment. This self-satisfaction that we do things that are pleasing to God, this belief that we keep God's commandments, and indeed do them like the son in the parable, who was so many years in the service of his father, this belief is also the reason why we have a completely false image of ourselves.
When the time comes when what we have inside our soul will be revealed, then a completely strange self and person emerges, alien to God, even with a pretense of righteousness, as this eldest son had. The eldest son says to his father, “Your son (not even calling him his brother) while he devoured all your property, and spent his life in fornication and impurity, has now come back and enjoys everything he had before and even more," while he himself did not enjoy this care from his father. Why is this? Because he never felt the need to know his father.
Christ says somewhere: “This is eternal life, that they may know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life is the knowledge of God. And what does the knowledge of God mean? What Christ says: “Learn from me that I am meek and humble of heart.” Ultimately, our relationship with God is not a relationship of a follower. God is not something we like, and we believe in Him, but He is something much more, because He reveals Himself to us. That is why our creation is in the image and likeness of God, we must become like God our Father. How else can we truly be His children? If we do not have traces that resemble Him, how will we resemble Him? And so that we do not think that we will resemble Him externally and thus become like Him, He revealed Himself to us, telling us: “Learn from me that I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” With one word, God revealed Himself to us in His entirety. So that we do not deceive ourselves and do not find an excuse that we did not know or did not understand that this is so. But in order to understand it, we must crush our idol. If this idol of the good man, the wise man, the moral man, the proper man, the prudent man, the worker for God and even the “so many years” worker is not crushed, we are not going to understand Him.
Some guys, who were a little curious, said to Elder Paisios: “Elder, have you been on Mount Athos for many years?” He told them that he came the same year with the neighbor’s mule. The year that he brought his mule to Mount Athos, he also entered. He wanted to tell them that even though the mule is on Mount Athos, it did not become a holy mule, it was just a mule, and it remained a mule. Of course, he said this out of humility for himself, and he did not have a lofty idea of himself. The people of God passed through the furnace of temptations and sorrows and acquired humility. And when we say temptation, let our mind not go only to temptations, which one suffers for the love of Christ and is persecuted, because he is pious and loves Christ. One has temptations of sin and the passions that disgrace us, but also temptations of atheism and many others.
There are people who experience terrible temptations. If we read the life of Saint Nephon, Bishop of Constantia, we will see what terrible temptations he went through. For several years, while he was a fearsome fighter, he was fought by the temptation of atheism. The devil told him that there is no God. He said: “Lord, help me!” The war was so strong that he would go crazy. He told him that you are a fornicator, an adulterer and he fought him constantly. Then the Saint answered the devil: “I neither fornicate nor commit adultery nor murder nor do anything, and I will not depart from the feet of Jesus Christ.” He put himself down there, crushed his idol, left the image of the good child, the good man, the one who should be this or that, the moral man who has “clean hands.” All these images left and were crushed.
I think that the Prodigal, being in a distant land and living prodigally and going through all this devastating suffering, after destroying everything, crushed himself but not vitally. Even though he literally fell apart when he was herding pigs, and he was hungry and everyone abandoned him and he reached the hell of rejection and abandonment, there he remembered his father, where it was darkness, hell and despair. Where you say everything is over and death seems like a redemption. There he found himself. He met his father at that specific moment, when he said: "I will arise and go to my father.” This thing helped him to come to his senses.
The other one had no such experience. No, because God deprived him of it, not because his father deprived him of it, but because the idea of himself, that for so many years he had not broken any commandment and was a good son and had never abandoned him, created in him the self-confidence, the good image of himself, which did not allow him to discover God as his father. This is the tragedy of this man, but also the tragedy that often overwhelms us, the “religious” people. Because we do not do great evils or we do them secretly or we even justify them and we do not experience this situation and do not understand it. We cannot function as God is, because we have never experienced the reality of God within our hearts, since we have never known Him.
I often feel sorry for myself, and first of all, when I see and hear people in the Church who speak disparagingly of a sinful, deluded, prodigal, or evil person. “Do not associate with him, do not speak to him, for he is lost.” A man of God cannot discriminate. The Gospel does not teach us to look down on others. How can we function in this way? It means that we have never understood what the Gospel means, what God means. We have not understood that “God is love, and he who loves abides in God.” We cannot function otherwise, we cannot exist.
The criterion of God’s presence is to love your brother. This is God’s judgment. Everything we do in the Church must result in love, and fasting, and prayer, and repentance. If they do not end there in love and everything feeds our egoism and self-confidence, then instead of virtues becoming gifts of the Holy Spirit, they become drugs that do not allow us to know God. This is indeed very sad, because there will inevitably come a time in our lives when either a temptation, or a sorrow or a trial and disaster, a death, an illness, financial collapse or anything else, that will immediately upset us. So we say, "Why didn't God protect me?" "Why me?" "Who is God?" "Why is it that the other person, the bad person, who doesn't go to church, who doesn't fast, who doesn't pray, why is it that everything is going well for him and I go from bad to worse?"
All these things begin to show that our spiritual life is not healthy. Surely God does not overlook anything. Whatever we give Him, He will take and will save us, He will not reject us, if we do everything we can. But this judgment is important and necessary in our lives, to see what is happening to us. What is happening to the quality of ourselves. And so that we are not deceived, God, through the Apostle Paul, through the Holy Spirit, revealed to us the fruits of the Holy Spirit. And He tells us not to be deceived and think that we are something. He gave us a list of things, so that we can put ourselves before us and judge ourselves. And He says: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faith, self-control” and other immeasurable gifts.
Let's take them one by one and see which of these we follow, let's see how our self functions. Do I have joy in my soul or do I only have it when my will is done, and everything goes well for me? If I don't have all of this, what should I do? To cry, and to wonder where all of this is? May this distance from God finally crush my heart to understand that something is wrong. And when I see those arrogant, selfish and dismissive behaviors towards other people, I should deny them. At least, let's be honest and let's find this key to God as well. The key to God is what the Publican found: "God make atonement for me a sinner." He didn't even raise his eyes to heaven. He was beating his chest and asking God to have pity him. The other one said “thank you,” that he was not, as he believed, “like other people,” or like the Publican. He did alms, fasted, and was good!
Likewise, how did the prodigal win God over? In the same way. He said: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.” He was immediately accepted by the father. The other brother went “rightfully”: “I have been serving you for so many years and have never disobeyed any of your commands.” Of course, everything the prodigal’s brother said was true and humanly speaking he might have been right. But he did not know his father, he could not approach him, he never learned about him, he was a stranger to him.
On Great Friday we say about the thief: “Remember me in your Kingdom was the key that opened Paradise,” and immediately the door of Paradise was opened and he entered. The Gospel, the Fathers said, is so easy but also so difficult. Whoever does not find the key, knocks on the door. We must find this key of God. Great Lent and the entire blessed period of the Triodion constantly has it before us. Humility, repentance, imitation of God. How will we imitate God? He became man, so that we may see Him and learn how to imitate Him. Who imitates Him? Those who follow Him everywhere: in the Passion, on the Cross and in all that characterized His life, so that we may also see our own resurrection.
Source: Recorded talk delivered at the Hesychasterion of the Holy Trinity, a Metochion of Machairas Monastery. Translated excerpt by John Sanidopoulos.
