Coping with Failure

He ate bugs [I could stop there, actually, and I think I would have made a pretty good point, but I’ll continue], wore uncomfortable unattractive home-made clothes, died young, and was, by his own admission, unworthy to unfasten the sandals of the man who came after him. When his own followers decided to abandon him to follow Jesus, he actually encouraged them to do so, saying: “Well, I must decrease so he can increase.” What a sad thing to say. Can you imagine any politician, movie star, superhero, CEO, or even any of our favorite televangelists saying something like that today: “I must fail so someone else can succeed.” Like most of the prophets, John was murdered by the very people he was trying to help. Furthermore, he was preparing them for a man they would eventually reject, humiliate, and execute. And yet…Jesus himself said of this failure that he was “the greatest man born of woman.” He’s one of the few saints in the Roman calendar who has two feast days devoted exclusively to him (One is his birth, the other is, ironically, his beheading).

Here we come upon a refreshing change of pace. Edward was a king. By the standards of the time, he was obscenely rich and singularly influential. However… He was one of the worst politicians in the history of Britain. King Edward, son of Etherlred the Unready (an unauspicious beginning if ever there was one), was a weak, impotent, timid, and famously ugly man. In worldly terms, a complete disappointment. During the course of his reign, Edward lost all his money without accumulating any political power. In fact, he allowed himself to be used as puppet by—of all people—his in-laws. Then when they were done with him, a pack of foreign con men took over. Furthermore despite his marriage to an intelligent and beautiful woman, he never managed to produced an heir, which is the one thing even an incompetent monarch can usually pull off. Some claim that this was his choice because he secretly wanted to be a monk. Others claim that his wife just could not force herself to sleep with him. Indeed, King Edward the Confessor left to history a reputation for weakness, indecision, and financial incompetence.

And yet…he remains England’s most popular saint. He built one of the world’s greatest abbeys at Westminster, and over a million people come every year to visit his tomb.

STORY #4: ROSE PHILIPINE DUSCHENEI’ll just read you a paragraph from her biography by Marian T. Horvat: “The first order she entered closed; she did not feel realized in the second institution until she came to America to convert the Indians. Then, instead of carrying out this long-desired mission, she was ordered to teach girls and found convents. The work was more difficult because she never learned to speak English. She founded one convent that failed, then another that foundered. The girls there were ungrateful and worldly, and the Sisters chaffed under her governance and wanted to relax the Rule. When she finally was permitted to go to work in an Indian mission, she was already seventy two years old, too old to work or learn the native language. But after only one year, she was denied even that great consolation - she was ordered to leave the Indian mission and return to Florissant….” where she died, having converted exactly one Indian, who apostacised three months later. And yet…she was utterly faithful to her call as a missionary, and a century after her death, the Pottawatomie Indians still remembered her as “That Woman Who Prayed.”

Saints like these would have baffled Achilles. Simon and Jude died without time´ or kleos. Edward squandered his political influence. John the Baptist had his head cut off. Rose Philipine Duschene died penniless and disappointed. No honor or glory here—not by Ancient Greek standards. In fact, these folks come up pretty short by our modern standards as well. You kind of have to wonder at the Church’s logic when it holds them up as role models.

And yet, that is the logic of the Cross—a logic which redefines success and turns human wisdom on its head. In the light of the cross, failure becomes promise, weakness becomes strength, the meek and humble inherit the earth.

This is why Nietzche ridiculed Christianity as a religion of the weak. We come from a long line of failures. Sometimes, we actually seem to take pride in that. Mother Teresa was asked once if she could possibly hope to succeed in India when the poverty was so overwhelming. Her answer was simply: “God does not expect us to be successful. He expects us to be faithful.”

This quotation has come to mean a lot to me in my work—especially in my work in our high school because, in addition to my teaching and praying, I also coach a rugby team which has not had a winning season in over ten years. Indeed, we only broke even once (we were four and four), and that year, my players tore down the goal posts because it marked the end of a twenty-year losing streak.

Now, some might argue that a losing streak of that magnitude may have had something to do with my coaching, but I prefer to look at it in biblical terms. You see, god has a special affection for losers. Look at all the losers, for example, in the long, baffling history of our salvation, starting with the Israelites themselves (whose finest king seemed to have a thing for other men’s wives) and continuing right through the age of the apostles (whose first unanimous decision was to run away when their leader got arrested), to our own age, and people like Saint Philipine Duchesne . So when it comes to losing, I sometimes convince myself that it is a sign of God’s special affection for my team; for every failure reminds us that Our beauty, our value, our integrity, lie not in our accomplishments, but simply in our existence as sons of God.

That said, I want to make one thing clear: failure is bad. Like all forms of suffering, it is a consequence of Original Sin, and it is natural—even wise—to avoid failure whenever possible.

But just as there is a tendency to romanticize suffering as though it were a thing to be sought out—or worse yet, enjoyed; so there can be a tendency to romanticize failure, as though it were just an alternative form of success. Like suffering, however, failure can be transfigured, enriched, elevated in the light of the cross, which was, in its unique way, the fusion of humanity’s greatest failure with its greatest victory.