Such was the prodigal son, when, quitting the infamous company of the swine, amongst which he had lived, he returned into his father's arms, half-naked, unclean and bemired, and smelling most offensively of the filth which he had contracted in the company of those vile beasts.
For what is it to forsake the swine, but to withdraw from sins? And what is it to return all ragged, tattered and unclean, but to have our affections engaged in the habits and inclinations which tend to sin? Yet still was he possessed of the life of the soul which is love; and as a phœnix rising out of its ashes, he found himself newly raised to life. He was dead, said his father, and is come to life again, he has revived.
--St. Francis de Sales,
Treatise on the Love of God,
Book X, chapter iv
Image source: John August Swanson, Story of the Prodigal Son (1984), https://johnaugustswanson.com/catalog/story-of-the-prodigal-son/
Quotation source
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