by Catherine
Doherty
I would
like to talk about failure. In this strange world of North America, in Canada
and the U.S.A., failure is seen as the end of the road. That’s a strange thing,
isn’t it, for Christians.
Look at
the crucifix. Can you think of any failure greater than that? The people in
Christ’s time saw him as a great prophet; some of them expected him to become
King of the Jews. Then they saw him crucified like a criminal. For them, that
looked like the greatest failure in the world.
Has it
ever occurred to you that a life without failure is a dead life? Because you
learn by failing. If you don’t try things, you’ll never learn anything. You’ll
never accomplish anything.
But when
we fail, what happens? “Oh, my God! Oh! Oh! Oh! Give me a psychiatrist. Give me
something. I’m a failure! I’m a failure! I’m a failure!”
I
fervently hope that every member of Madonna House fails at least once a week—in
little things and in big things. Only then will they learn what it is to live.
You know,
it’s an amazing thing. It’s a totally amazing thing that the fear of failure is
the fear that gnaws at the heart of people. The worst thing that can happen to
an American or a Canadian is to fail, whatever it is they are in: school,
exams, a job, whatever.
It starts
when you are small. Parents say: “What’s the matter with you? Look at your
sister; look at your brother. Look at the next-door neighbor. They made
something of themselves.”
I
remember when I first came to North America. I was at a train station, a small
station, and there was a band there.
A crowd
of people was waiting for the train. So, the train arrived and somebody got
off. There was applause, the band played, and girls threw batons in the air.
I thought
to myself: “This must be a very important person; he must have done something
great. He must have discovered a cure for a disease or done something else to
benefit mankind.”
Finally,
when everybody left, I asked the station master about it.
He said,
“This guy made good. He was the son of a poor farmer, and he went to the city
and made a lot of money.”
“Oh?”
said I. “Money? And that’s why you had the band?”
Now, to
me, this man was an absolute failure. To them, he was an absolute success.
Many
years ago, when I was a nurse, I had a patient who was a hypochondriac. This
woman had absolutely nothing the matter with her. I said to her: “Lady, why
don’t you go home and give the hospital bed to somebody who really needs it?”
She
reported me. As a nurse, I never should have said that. This was a terrible
failure, and after I did it, I knew that. The doctor came to me and the head
nurse, and they said: “Catherine, what happened to you?”
I said,
“I told her off, Sir.” The doctor said, “Bravo!” and the head nurse said, “I am
going to ignore this incident.”
I said,
“Thank you.” So that failure turned out all right.
But the
members of Madonna House know that my name was mud until Vatican II. Well, not
completely, but still …. Was I a failure? Yes. I was thrown out of Toronto; I
was thrown out of Harlem. My road has been one failure after another.
Generally
speaking, there is a very deep and spiritual thing that we need to talk about
when we talk about failure. We really need to. We need to acknowledge who we
are. We are creatures and not God.
If we
think we can live without ever failing, we are committing blasphemy. Only God
is perfect; so only God never fails.
What is
that deep thing that I’m talking about? It’s called humility—plain and simple.
Who do you think you are that you can’t fail?
Pride is
one of the terrible sins, but that is what everybody wants to aim at: to be
absolutely without failure. But this is absolutely impossible for human beings;
so to want it is to want to be more than human.
But
Christ said, Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of
heart (Mt 11:29). And we say we are his followers! Something is
utterly, terribly wrong.
So
acknowledge your failures. The simplest thing is to ask forgiveness. Say, “I
failed. I’m sorry.”
Acknowledging
your failure is not at all anything to be ashamed of. On the contrary, it is
something to be proud of. That’s the right kind of pride, because it’s
humility.
Why this
fear of failure? It’s not only the fact that you might lose a job, which you
usually don’t. It’s the fear of disapproval.
Yes,
behind this desire to succeed lies, of course, the need for approval. And
behind this need of approval lies the terrible hunger of people on this North
American continent for love.
But you
are never unloved and you are never alone. The person you need to go to when
you have failed is Jesus Christ.
God is in
our midst. Christ is with me; Christ is right here. Christ is mercy and love. This is part of our faith.
Do I
really believe what I say I believe? Do I believe in the mercy of God or not?
The thing
is that we don’t really believe it. This is the thing that just breaks my
heart.
Why is it
that we don’t believe it? It’s such a simple thing. It’s such an obvious thing.
You just have to put your hand out, and you touch the garment of God. Like the
woman in the Gospel.
Failure!
For Pete’s sake, I’ll storm heaven for you so that, once and for all, you cry
out to God: “Lord, I understand that I am human and that I will fail all my
life. Please bless my failures. I don’t want to make them, but please make it
so that I do not die inwardly when I fail.”
I don’t
know how to explain, how to bring the Lord to your heart, so that you
understand that he who appeared to be the greatest failure of all, loves
failures.
The
Pharisees pointed and said: “Look, he eats with sinners.” Translated into our
modern English, this means, “He eats with failures.”
Nobody
wants to be a failure—except when the moment comes when we can accept being a
failure in men’s eyes, the moment when we can accept our imperfections. Except
when the moment comes when we can say, “Oh, Lord, look at me. I am a sinner,
and I am a failure. But come and have supper with me.”
Don’t try
for the perfection of the world. Try for the perfection that is so imperfect.
Try to love everyone, no matter how hurtful that person is to you.
They said
in that conference I spoke at in New Jersey that Christ builds on our weakness.
Let us begin to accept that weakness that Christ wants to build on, and that
includes failure.
—Excerpted
and adapted from an after-dinner spiritual reading by Catherine at Madonna
House, Oct. 28, 1977
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