“For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.”
Luke 15:24 — Greek Interlinear
Church Fathers on Luke 15:24
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 be came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, but I perish with hunger.
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.
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.