"I Shall Arise, and Seek My Father's House"

The first time I ever heard the hymn, “Turn Back, O Man,” I didn’t really hear it as a hymn at all. It was as a torch song — though I then didn’t know what a torch song was, either — in a production of Godspell. If memory serves, I think it’s the Mary Magdalene character who sings it. I do wish I could remember where that production was. There used to be a place called Playhouse by the River, along the Delaware in eastern Pennsylvania, a few miles south of the Delaware Water Gap. It might have been there; it might have been at a local college. In any case, the young actors did an excellent job, and I don’t think they could have pulled it off without believing what they were singing. As you’ve no doubt guessed from our Word of the Week, prodigal, that story never fails to move me, so that anybody singing of the return to the Father will hold my attention. The French poet Charles Peguy says that all you have to do is to utter the first words of that parable, “A man had two sons,” and there you are in the midst of the story, because there is something about it that convicts us all, even as it gives us the most profound hope.

But today I’m not going to talk about “Turn Back, O Man,” which isn’t really about the Prodigal Son — I’ll save that hymn for another time. The thing is that I’ve written a hymn of my own, inspired by “Turn Back, O Man.” I wrote it for The Hundredfold, my book-length poem made up of 100 poems centering on the life of Christ. What I decided was this. I’d use the melody for the hymn, Old 124th, and I’d pick up a cue from the poet who wrote the hymn, Clifford Bax. That is, he wrote three stanzas of five lines, in which the fifth line repeats the first line, or very nearly so, with the effect that the stanzas themselves turn back. Well then, I said to myself, “I’ll write a hymn that does that same turn with the stanzas.” But I wanted more. First, I wanted it to focus sharply on the parable. Second, I wanted four stanzas, not three, to develop the theme more fully. Finally, I wanted the last stanza not only to include a “turn” in itself, as the first three stanzas do, but to be itself a “turn” on them besides. That is, I not only wanted the fifth line to reprise the first line, as in the other stanzas, but I wanted each of those others to be suggested, one by one, in lines two, three, and four of the last stanza. In this way, the final stanza would come to its climax by bringing back the other stanzas and including them in the climax too. A tricky job.

Now, I’ve decided to use this hymn again in the more comprehensive work I’m near to completing, The Twelve-Gated City, because that work is actually structured by twelve long narratives, each a meditation on one or two of the verses from the parable of the Prodigal Son. That’s not all I’m up to, not by a long shot; The Twelve-Gated City is made up of 144 poems (33 dramatic monologues or epistles or dialogues; 66 lyric poems; 33 hymns; and these 12 narratives). This particular hymn about the Prodigal Son comes between two monologues. The first is a letter by Matthew the tax collector to a Roman friend I’ve imagined, just before Jesus has dinner at his house, which was a scandal to all right-thinking Jews, who despised those collaborators with the Roman state. The second is a monologue by the Roman centurion, also just before Jesus heals his servant boy — the centurion who uttered those brave and noble words, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.” I hope you will like it; it fits the theme of our week, as you’ll see.

There is one idea in it that I haven’t talked about this week, and that’s the strange hesitance or unwillingness of people who aren’t particularly happy, to turn back, to come to their senses and say, with the younger son in the parable, “What the heck am I doing here?” Sins don’t make people happy; the good Father forbids only what is bad for us anyhow, and commands only what is good for us. So you would think that the disappointments that sin brings in its wake would make us scratch our heads and say, “I’m going home.” Yet habit is hard to break, even when, or maybe especially when, it makes us give up all real hope. Don’t give up, then, O man! The Father is waiting, and the feast is going on even now.

“Return of the Prodigal Son,” James Tissot. Public Domain.

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Read About The Hundredfold Below.

I shall arise, and seek my Father’s house.
Too full am I with all the world endows,
Water for wine, and dust and chaff for corn,
Though men who starve shall cover me with scorn
When I arise, and seek my Father’s house.

Hear from afar the singing at the feast!
The First-Begotten rises in the east,
Turns all my sorrow to the wine of mirth,
Breaks bread from heaven, while the men of earth
Hear from afar the singing at the feast.

Let them repent, and beg the Father’s grace.
What have they won for all their weary race?
Hunger and thirst, and feeding swine for hire,
While he who drives them never shall retire
Lest they repent, and beg the Father’s grace.

Who has the words of everlasting life?
Hear how He calls above our sound and strife;
See how He feasts the penitent who bows
And glorifies Him in his Father’s house,
Who has the words of everlasting life.

© Anthony Esolen, from The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord. (Ignatius, 2019)

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