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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
John Chrysostom
After that he had suffered in a foreign land all such things as the wicked deserve, constrained by the necessity of his misfortunes, that is, by hunger and want, he becomes sensible of what had been his ruin, who through fault of his own will had thrown himself from his father to strangers, from home to exile, from riches to want, from abundance and luxury to famine; and he significantly adds, But I am here perishing with hunger. …
Gregory of Nyssa
The younger son had despised his father when first he departed, and had wasted his father's money. But when in course of time he was broken down by hardship, having become a hired servant, and eating the same food with the swine, he returned, chastened, to his father's house. Hence it is said, And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, but I perish with hunger.
Theophylact of Ohrid
With time the prodigal came to himself. For as long as he lived dissolutely, he was outside himself. It is said that he squandered his substance, and rightly so: therefore he is outside himself. For whoever is not governed by reason, but lives as one without reason and drives others to unreason, that one is outside himself, and will not remain with his substance, that is, with his reason. …
Western Saints
Augustine of Hippo
But he returned to himself, when from those things which without unprofitably entice and seduce, he brought back his mind to the inward recesses of his conscience. (ubi sup.) But whence could he know this who had that great forgetfulness of God, which exists in all idolaters, unless it was the reflection of one returning to his right understanding, when the Gospel was preached. …
Ambrose of Milan
He rightly returns to himself, because he departed from himself. For he who returns to God restores himself to himself, and he who departs from Christ rejects himself from himself.
Gregory the Dialogist
Therefore God chose these whom the world despises, because very often that contempt itself calls a person back to himself. For he who left his father and squandered prodigally the portion of substance he had received, after he began to hunger, returned to himself and said: "How many hired servants in my father's house have bread in abundance?" Indeed he had departed far from himself when he was sinning. …
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