The Christian Does Not Know Luck

24th Sunday of the Year

The Prodigal Son by George Grey Barnard

Here is a question for you: what is your favorite verse from the Parable of the Prodigal Son? We know the story so well. The other night I was out with friends, and we talked for some time about the Parable. I think my friends would tell you that their favorite verse has something to do with the second son, the one who lives in the house of his father but does not live as a son. The words of the father are so powerful at the conclusion of the Parable: My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. What verse from the Gospels more powerfully conveys the love of God for his adopted sons and daughters?

The last time I put together a homily on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, I think I focused on those same verses about the second son. But another verse from the Parable has recently captured my attention: When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. I do not think I realized until the other day that the whole movement of the Parable hinges on these lines. The famine that strikes the country in which the prodigal son has found himself is the driving force behind his repentance. The circumstances of life intertwine in just the right way at just the right time—sudden poverty in a land suddenly afflicted with hunger and scarcity of resources—and these circumstances place the prodigal son in a position to realize the error of his ways. The circumstances of life break the son down; a famine forces him to compete with swine for food. The son finds himself humbled; we can imagine that he became possessed of great shame at the decisions he has made. Christ tells us that the prodigal son comes to his senses: he does not experience some dramatic moment of conversion but rather thinks clearly for the first time about how he is living his life. And so the son decides to return home and beg the father’s mercy. But the repentance—the humility, the conversion—none of that happens without a famine.

I think the reality of famine as the necessary background to the son’s conversion ought to terrify us—at least at first. There is a concept in the world of philosophy called ‘moral luck.’ The meaning of moral luck is that none of us is responsible for many of the circumstances that define our lives. Here is an example: you live the life you live because you were born in whatever country you were born in, and you were born in whatever year you were born in, and because you were not born in Germany in the 1930s. If you had been born in Germany in the 1930s, your life would be completely different. To be born in Germany in the 1930s is to live a life marked by the horrors of war and depression and political oppression. And here is the point of moral luck: you are not responsible for the year or country of your birth; all of that comes down to ‘luck,’ some philosophers would say; you do not get to choose the world into which you are born. Moral luck shows up in other parts of life as well: we make decisions to perform a certain kind of action or make a certain kind of commitment, but there is never a guarantee that life will work out the way we want it to work out simply because we have made a good decision. Sometimes we are lucky and life works out the way we want it to work out; sometimes we are not so lucky. Some people are disposed to anger; some people are disposed to fear; some people are born with perfect health; others are born with health problems. And we are not responsible for any of these kinds of predispositions; no one makes a choice to be born a certain way or confront certain kinds of challenges in life. Some people just seem to have bad luck, while others are quite fortunate.

There is a part of me that wants to say that moral luck is a part of life that we rarely talk about but that is there in the background determining so much about who we are and what kinds of lives we live. The prodigal son seems to benefit directly from that kind of good fortune: a famine strikes the land where he is living and the circumstances of life force him to return home; in other words, the prodigal son gets lucky. In a world without famine, maybe the prodigal son never returns home. But I cannot help but believe that moral luck is a problem only for the person who lacks faith. Moral luck is only a real problem for the atheist, for the person who looks out into the world and does not see the designs of providence. For the Christian, the circumstances of life—even the circumstances about which we have no control—these circumstances of life become a way for God to demonstrate his power. We who believe in Christ identify in the circumstances of life the very means through which we experience the mercy and love of God.

This past June, I spent almost two weeks out in Colorado. The first five days I spent with priests I met several years ago in Bogota, Colombia and who now serve in Denver. I showed up at their doorstep because another priest—who taught at my seminary—told me before I left the country that if my plans fell apart, I could find these priests and ask for their help, and they would care for me. And I could spend a whole day telling you of the various circumstances of life that brought me to seminary when and how it did; circumstances absolutely beyond my control. The next several days I spent in Colorado with other friends, about fifteen other people. Everyone knew me, but most people did not know one another. And I remember sitting on our long porch overlooking this gorgeous valley carved out between perfectly sculpted mountain ridges and enjoying the intoxicating sound of people coming to know one another. “How did you get here?” became the question of the trip. And we sat on that porch for hours at a time, listening to a single person tell the story of their life—of the thousands of circumstances that came together in the way that they did to place that person on that porch at that exact moment—to place that person in our lives. And I cannot help but believe that to hear a Christian speak of the circumstances of life in such a way has nothing to do with luck, and everything to do with providence, with the love and mercy of God.

Here is a lesson from today’s readings: every circumstance of life is an occasion for God’s mercy. Every circumstance of life is a moment for conversion. A famine—despite the horror of hunger and poverty—can become the very reality that gets a person back to God. The worst kinds of human depravity, the kinds of idolatry we hear about in our First Reading—idolatries that sever us from God and from one another—these idolatries can become the very means through which God reminds us of his promises. And as St. Paul tells us in his Letter to Timothy, the foremost of sinners can become the most profound witness to the glory of Christ and the mercy of God. Paul did not make the choice to be born a Jew when and where he was born. Paul did not make the choice to meet Christ when and where he met his savior. The circumstances of life—circumstances far beyond his control and having little to do with any choice that he had made—became for Paul an occasion of mercy. There is no such thing as luck for the Christian, only circumstances that make every moment of our lives a moment for encountering God.

Talking about the designs of providence is hard. We cannot believe as Christians that every aspect of our lives is determined by God; that we are only marionettes toyed with by a divine puppeteer. At the same time, we cannot believe that we are victims of the circumstances of life—that every part of life is random and that we cannot make meaningful decisions about what kind of life we want to live. Christian freedom demands that we reject both of these approaches to our human lives. We live our Christian lives somewhere in-between: we do not get to choose many of the circumstances that define our lives, but we absolutely get to choose how we will use the circumstances within which we find ourselves to unite ourselves more deeply to the life of God. The readings given to us this weekend reveal to us a God who levels the playing field of human life: a famine in a foreign land, the violent persecution of the Church, idolatry and worship of a golden calf in the desert, the power of God is so great that these circumstances simply become the means through which the faithful meet the love and mercy of God.

There is a statement about the Parable of the Prodigal Son that I cherish very much: 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.¹ There is a beautiful reality. The prodigal son trusted in the love of the father even as he wasted his inheritance and lived a life of sin. The prodigal son knew he could go home. We need to know that we can go home, too. The kind of trust in the love of the Father that we witness in the Parable of the Prodigal Son—we need that same kind of conviction in our lives as well. But we also—at times—need to come to our senses; we need to think more clearly. The Christian life is a life of seizing opportunity: the circumstances of life—realities far beyond our control—become for the Christian the very ways through which we find our way home and meet the love and mercy of God. The Christian does not know luck; we are not a people who depend on good fortune or adventitious turns of events. We are a people who believe that the power of God makes every circumstance in life into a moment for conversion.

Homily preached on September 11th, 2022 at the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

1. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible.