The father's love was already there waiting for him (Hans Urs von Balthasar)

  Once a person learns to read the signs of love and thus to believe it, love leads him into the open field wherein he himself can love.  If the prodigal son had not believed that the father’s love was already there waiting for him, he would not have been able to make the journey home – even if his father’s love welcomes him in a way he never would have dreamed of.  The decisive thing is that the sinner has heard of a love that could be, and really is, there for him; he is not the one who has to bring himself into line with God; God has already seen in him, the loveless sinner, a beloved child and has looked upon him and conferred dignity upon him in the light of this love.

--Hans Urs von Balthasar, 

Love Alone Is Catholic

Image source: John Macallan Swan, The Prodigal Son (1888), https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/swan-the-prodigal-son-n01569

Quotation source