I left home, because I thought life began far from You.
I carried Your gifts and forgot Your hands. I thought freedom was a road, and discovered it was a long, nameless weariness.
I spent myself before I spent the money, and lost my heart before I lost the days.
And when I hungered, the hunger was not for bread; it was a hunger for meaning, a hunger for a voice to call me: my son.
I came back with hesitant steps, rehearsing words of apology, training my voice to break.
But I never reckoned that You would run. You ran toward me before I arrived. You embraced my weakness before I confessed, and gave me back my name before I recovered myself.
You did not ask me where I had been; You said: "You were dead and have come to life."
You did not call me to account for yesterday, but opened today for me. And when I looked at the table, I understood at last: that home is an embrace, and that returning is a birth.
O my Father,
teach me to return every day — when I go astray, when I grow proud, and when I am in the house yet not in Your heart. And when I see You running toward me, let me not be ashamed of my tears, nor afraid of a love unlike the love of men.