The Return of the Prodigal Son by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Available from Refuge of Sinners Publishing and Mary Immaculate Queen Center. You can read this book for free on Archive.org and here on Parmenidean.is!
Book Length: 581 pages
We live in a world in which literacy has become common; yet as much as this skill is praised (and indeed, in of itself it is praiseworthy) how many take the time to seriously ponder how it is utilized by the average “reader”? They abuse rather than use this great gift, for the mass of them—despite the accessibility of superior literature—choose to read works filled with the wisdom of this world, which is, as Scripture relates, “foolishness with God” (1 Cor. 3:19). But the wisdom of the modern world is at an even lower degree than the wisdom of the pagan world St. Paul confronted nearly two thousand years ago. A brief survey of the literary world of that time compared to the literary world of the present suffices. On the one hand, we have works such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid—all of which, despite having been written by minds clouded in pagan darkness, reach out to our benighted age with hands of grandfatherly sanity. Ingrained in them all is a rich sense of heroism, a love of the natural world, and culture in the truest sense of the term.
Contrariwise, the mass literature of our time will scarce survive the next century, because the products of hubris never have nor ever will be great, no matter what their sniveling defenders say. For modern and post-modern literature prides itself in being blatantly impious, and indeed, the term irreverent is used as a means of praising such filth! If one can even understand these labyrinthine works, such a person—presuming they are of good will—instead of encountering a great ideal to be spurred on by, shall find themselves scandalized by their contents. But this exaltation of sin in the name of liberty, with all its ugliness laid bare, was exactly the intention of the modernist neo-pagans; for as the wise Joseph de Maistre wrote of the rationalists, these sad excuses of writers have likewise “…prostituted genius to irreligion, and according to the words of the dying St. Louis, WAGED WAR AGAINST GOD AND HIS GIFTS…” (Maistre 44).1
The contemporary iteration of this conflict is worth illustrating, for Father Michael Müller wisely understood the combat between good and bad books in his own time, the nineteenth century. He begins his grand analogy of the Prodigal Son story to the spiritual life by discussing the value of good books throughout history, producing one of several examples to illustrate his point:
Dr. Palafox, the pious Bishop of Osma, in his preface to the letters of St. Teresa, relates that an eminent Lutheran minister at Bremen, who was famed for several works which he had published against the Catholic Church, purchased the Life of St. Teresa, with a view of attempting to confute it. But after reading it over attentively, he was converted to the Catholic faith, and from that time forward led a most edifying life.
(11)
Furthermore, he adds:
The tendency of pious reading to induce men of the world to change their ways and enter on the path of a holy life, may be seen from the conversion of St. Augustine.
(Ibid)
Indeed, what a marked contrast is there between the exemplary character of spiritual books to the dim quality of irreverent books! One category leads souls on the right road to eternal happiness; the other encourages them down the broad way that leads to a destruction that shall be ageless. In a later chapter, Father Müller discusses this comparison which I am now raising in great detail, and does so with such clarity and vividness that any Catholic reader is sure to experience relief from imbibing his fatherly guidance. Exhorting the reader, he writes:
Assuredly, if we are bound by every principle of our religion to avoid bad company, we are equally bound to avoid bad books; for of all evil, corrupting company, the worst is a bad book…Never take a book into your hands which you would not be seen reading. Avoid not only notoriously immoral books and papers, but avoid also all those miserable sensational magazines and novels and illustrated papers which are so profusely scattered around on every side. The demand which exists for such garbage speaks badly for the moral sense and intellectual training of those who read them. If you wish to keep your mind pure and your soul in the grace of God, you must make it a firm and steady principle of conduct never to touch them.
(433-434)
Now upon reading this, there may be some that ask, “This is true—but I must read this or that immoral book for my class. What must I do?” It is a sensible question, given the shameless character of modern education, a system which not even the most depraved university professor of Father Müller’s day could have envisioned. To the best of my ability, I will briefly answer it here, adding that I would recommend such an inquirer to consult a good traditional priest for the most trustworthy opinion.
Though the evil of bad books has been greatly multiplied by the Internet, one can use this tool as a means to find websites which have the contents of these books summarized for you. Since, “we ought to obey God, rather than men” (Acts 5:29) as St. Peter said, it is not wrong for you to consult these sites so that you may avoid reading filth. Unfortunately, the book in question may be too obscure to warrant being covered on such sites; in that event, it would be justified to skim over the contents within, so that you may minimize your contact with the rudderless and foul doctrines present on those pages while simultaneously gaining enough of a sense of these details to pass your class. There are, however, some new AI programs which would further remove one from the occasion of sin, as these can read entire PDFs and summarize them for you—use them if you can. Perhaps it may also be worth confronting your teacher or professor about the content of such books, if you have a reasonable expectation that doing so will not involve casting pearls before swine. May prudence guide you in facing such a conflict. And to such persons, whom I presume to be high school or university students studying in secular or historically Catholic institutions, I would also recommend frequent reading of good spiritual writings and worthy secular books—even on a daily level, if possible—to combat the pernicious influence of your “educators”.
This digression, aside from being a potential source of practical advice, also has this lesson underlying it: the battle between good and bad books involves the great questions of fulfillment and happiness which dominate the minds of all mankind.
Only in God can our souls truly rest, in this life and in the next. Father Müller touches well on this truth, for in confronting the noxious errors of materialism and its father worldliness, he writes:
Now, why is it that the riches and the pleasures of this world cannot make us happy? It is because the soul was not created by and for them, but by God, for Himself. Therefore it is the enjoyment of God alone that can make the soul happy.
A thing is made better only by that which is better than the thing itself. Inferior beings can never make superior beings better. The soul, being immortal, is superior to all earthly things. Earthly things, then, cannot make the soul better.
(55)
Such truths are perceived simply by those who have the Faith, but to those who have it not, these same words would appear to them as the pillar of cloud did to the Egyptians. Sin blinds and binds those who believe to an extent, given our fallen nature. In this, obviously one must make a distinction between a person in a state of grace, who will be less affected by this than a person in the state of mortal sin, who is directly subject to the Devil. But those who are effected even more by the symptoms of our shared spiritual illness are those who do not believe and do not adore God, because they have not the true remedy for sin. Yet man still desires this thing, this peace that the world cannot give. So what does the Devil do? He creates dupes of the truth to mislead men—but this is allowed by God, and allowed justly, for as St. Paul wrote of the pagans: “Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves” (Romans 1:24).
The two greatest dupes in the past several hundred years are those of Protestantism and Atheism. Both have claimed to provide things that only the Revealed Religion gives us: a deep intimacy with God for the Protestant, and a rational approach to life for the Atheist. As Christ said, “By their fruits, you shall know them” (Matthew 7:16). What have been the fruits of Protestantism and Atheism? The tearing apart of the religious and civil unity of Western European civilization in the first, and rivers of blood and rivers of impurity in the second. Both have played fundamental roles in creating the disorderly affair of things we witness all around us, for without the ultimate subjectivism of the Protestant mind—”private judgment”—and the secular humanist sentimentality of the Atheist mind, civilization could not have reached a point where even basic natural truths such as the family could come under an intellectual assault tolerated and encouraged by legal sanction of the state.
Moreover, the moral and theological decadence of the Post-Conciliar Church comes not from a presumed failure of Catholic first principles, but instead their rejection of these principles in favor of blending Catholic thought with the aforementioned false systems of belief. In so doing, they thus have created a new hybrid religion akin to Anglicanism, even to the point that they have their own “low church” and “high church” internal conflict, just with different terms: “reverent” against “irreverent”, “conservative” against “liberal”.2 These results are the macrocosm of these demonically inspired movements. Father Müller instead focuses more so on the microcosm, and to great effect. First examining atheism, he writes:
Corruption of the heart or slavery of the passions is the very first cause, the prolific mother, of infidelity.
(139)
He thus adds, a little later on the same page:
The infidel’s reason is the dupe of his heart.
(Ibid)
Providing a story in support of these claims, which are perhaps even more apparent now than they were back then, the author relates:
There lived in France a certain philosopher, an infidel, named Banguer. When he was lying on his death-bed, he sent for the priest, the Rev. Father La Berthonie, to assist him in his last moments. The priest instructed him at great length to rouse his faith. “Hasten to the end, Rev. Father,” said the philosopher; “for it is my heart rather than my mind that wants to be healed; I was an unbeliever only because I was bad.”
(141)
Though the venerable author uses examples which are evidently not from our time, such details are no drawbacks, for the causes and experiences of infidelity are perennial. In fact, would it surprise you, dear reader, that the one who writes this review was ensnared by the lies of atheism when he was younger? Well, that is the plain truth—I too was an unbeliever, in short, because I was bad, as Banguer said to Father La Berthonie. And so I write here, that Father Müller’s chapters concerning the malaise of infidelity in this book describe well the experience I felt in that miserable time in my life, especially these words: “The hell of the infidel begins even in this world, and it continues throughout all eternity in the next” (Ibid). Thanks be to Our Lord for his mercy to me and for the grace of repentance, for without these, I would have been doomed to this fate!
The claim, then, of the atheist that his “reason” leads him to deny the existence of God is a false pretense, for really it is his passions which lead him to do so. Added to this is the increasing number of children being raised without any religious belief whatsoever, let alone a Catholic one—a problem which had a presence even in Father Müller’s time too, startlingly enough—and there is a recipe for a society dominated by the passions under the guise of “reason”. This same “reason” which leads men to deny the God who created the universe and who sent His Son to redeem us has, by its very basis in irrational vice, concocted neo-gnostic philosophies which deny the racial uniqueness among human beings and the biological truth of the two sexes, male and female.
Even as a laborer in the Lord’s vineyard in the midst of a Protestant-dominated America, the Redemptorist missionary who authored this book was no less soft in reproaching this false system of belief. It would be especially beneficial for every Catholic, especially those who live in the United States, to read his whole section on this subject from the chapter “The Far Country—Infidelity” but these words should suffice:
Paganism in its old form was doomed. Christianity had silenced the oracles and driven the devils back to hell. How was the devil to re-establish his worship on earth, and carry on his war against the Son of God and the religion which he taught us? Evidently only by changing his tactics and turning the truth into a lie.
(151)
Is this not more evident in our time, in which the mainline Protestant denominations—the Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, etc—have not only ordained women, but preach an entirely worldly gospel entirely at odds with even the diluted Christianities which their founders taught? Moreover, if we look at Europe today, which nations are the most atheistic? Are they not the ones which threw themselves into the arms of the Protestant Revolution, the Northern countries such as Britain, Sweden, and Denmark? Thus what Father Muller saw clearly less than two centuries ago is further proved today.
Let us then turn our attention to the pivotal point of the Prodigal Son story, and of the story of anyone like him: the Sacrament of Penance. This gift of heaven is despised by the worldly Catholic, who takes after the Atheist and the Protestant, but is so loved by the sincere and devout Catholic. The good author worthily treats of this subject in a manner which is sure to edify both the ignorant and the learned among the faithful.
“Confession is resurrection—sweet resurrection indeed!” Father Muller proclaims, and with abundant justification (391). For he writes in an earlier part of this work:
The cross, the blood, the wounds of Jesus preach most eloquently the dread reality of these never-ending torments [of Hell]. An eternal God suffers, an eternal God dies a most cruel, shameful death. And why? Certainly not to save man from temporal punishment, but to save him from everlasting torments.
(232)
Perhaps the most commonly quoted verse of the New Testament, especially by the Protestants, is the following:
God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting
(John 3:16)
It is this truth which is preached to us by the crucifix and the confessional, and apart from them the beautiful language of this verse cannot be properly understood.
In like manner, and no less significant, Father Muller focuses on the subject of prayer and expounds its vital importance in the spiritual life.3 For if the Prodigal Son did not pray, how could he have gained the fortitude to return to his father and confess himself before him? The author worthily explains this noble analogy in the chapter “The Prodigal’s Prayer—the Key to God’s Mercy”.
Rightly does he term prayer the “Key to God’s Mercy”—but it is also the key to obtain the strength to overcome even the most severe of temptations, a truth which he brings to the attention of the reader elsewhere in this work:
But we must also remember that God will give us strength in the hour of temptation, only on condition that we pray for it; that we must pray for it earnestly, perserveringly.
(489)
Moreover, he adds:
God, without our asking for it, gives us the grace to do what is easy, but not what is difficult.
(Ibid)
How many of us have fallen into sins, venial or grave, simply because we did not pray in the hour of temptation? The Apostles fled from Our Lord because they did not pray in the hour of temptation; thus instead of imitating them in their weakest moments, we ought to imitate the Holy Virgin, who stood beside her dying Jesus and remained in prayer. Despite suffering an interior agony worse than all the torments of the martyrs put together, she prayed—this ought to humble us and move us to seek her intercession. What a sublime lesson is this! Among her various intentions was the spiritual welfare of all those who were to “have life in his name” (John 20:31), including ourselves. For when He said to her, “Woman, behold thy son” (John 19:26) he was referring to both St. John and the Catholic faithful who were to come. Thus, as any sound spiritual writer does, he follows the command of Christ, “Behold thy mother” (John 19:27) and recommends us to this same Virgin Mary:
When a sense of utter loneliness oppresses us, when we seem abandoned by all the world, then is the time to remember that we have a Mother in heaven. The Blessed Virgin Mary has not forgotten us.
(520)
Like the flame of a candle in a dark room, our Blessed Mother felt abandonment at the Cross. But, even while suffering a sadness greater than any we could experience ourselves, as St. Alphonsus tells us, she unswervingly maintained her faith in her Son. Any worthwhile depiction of the Crucifixion which shows not only the agony of the Lord, but also of the faithful few who stood by Him in those inscrutably terrible hours will illustrate this. Contemplate such images, and be strengthened in your faith that Mary will heal your loneliness and distress with the tenderness of a knowing mother—thus pray to her, and you shall be heard.
She will help guide us in this valley of tears, and to preserve the kingdom of God within ourselves. The true sense of those mysterious words, “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21) were grasped not by the impious Tolstoy, but by Father Müller, for he writes:
Our blessed Lord Himself assures us that “the kingdom of God is within us.” Now, what do we mean by a kingdom? Look for a moment at the kingdoms of Europe, with their vast dominions, their great power and wealth. Among the cities of these kingdoms, there is usually one city more populous than the rest, where the streets are laid out, and the public buildings and the private houses erected in a most magnificent manner. It is generally in this city that the royal palace is built. The exterior of the palace is adorned in a manner befitting the king, and the interior is enriched with gold and sliver, polished wood, rich silks and tapestry, rare statues and paintings, the choicest works of art. Now, the soul of the just man is something far more noble, far more beautiful, than this royal palace. The soul, when in the state of grace, is the palace of the King of kings; it is the dwelling-place of the God of heaven and earth. Holy angels are there in attendance upon Him, and it is there He manifests Himself to the soul, and hears her prayers, and holds sweet communion with her.
Awareness of the sublime indwelling of the Holy Trinity within ourselves ought to move us toward virtue and away from vice. If we stay the right course and keep His commandments, the world may assault us, but their malice shall be in the grand scheme of things like a shout in the street—a passing thing soon forgotten. For eternity shall greet us all, whether favorably or unfavorably; it is up to ourselves to make the decision to live in God’s light, and if we persevere no matter our stumbles on the narrow road to Heaven, we shall find His eternal kingdom our home. Like the Prodigal Son, we shall be met with a joy and a peace which surpasses anything that any earthly country, far or near, could ever offer.4 This book should be read—even in the abridged version—by as many Catholics as possible.5 It is a repository of sound theology from an outstanding Redemptorist priest. Furthermore, it is a gold mine of spiritual treasure, especially in Father Müller’s wise use of analogical stories and real stories from the lives of the saints. There are some parts of this work which repeat themselves. Considering, however, that these occurrences in the text are infrequent and also serve to reinforce important lessons, I find this not to be an issue. If you must read a tome, read this one!
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pg. 44, Maistre: Major Works. Vol. I. Imperium Press.
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For further consideration on this issue, I recommend the following article from the WM Review:
“The Anglicanisation of Catholics – are we the ‘high-church wing’?” by S.D. Wright.
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So invested was Father Müller in teaching the faithful the importance of this subject that he wrote an entire book on it, entitled Prayer: The Key of Salvation. You can read this book for free here on Parmenidean.is.
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Worthily could these closing lines of the Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer be added:
It will be well for him who seeks mercy,
consolation from the Father in heaven,
where all our security stands.
(Trans. by Elaine Treharne)
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The abridged version of the book can be ordered from St. Bonaventure Publications and Amazon.