Dear Parish Family, The word failure can mean many things. Failure to accomplishseveral things which were on our “to do” list today. The failure togive a warm smile or encouragement to someone. The failure to beas successful as we had hoped. Having a certain brokenness. Failureto arrest addiction. The failure to change the course of our lives, andon and on. In order to grow we need to learn from our failures! The old adageof “we learn from our mistakes and not from our successes” is sovery true. We need to reevaluate and create opportunities ratherthan letting failure consume us. Does God want us to fail? I amsure many of us have asked ourselves this. Jeremiah 29:11 remindsus “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans toprosper you, and not harm you, to give you hope and a future.” What excellent examples of failure and ultimate success from thisarticle by Mathew Kelly. None of us is perfect. This is a truth that most of uslearn early in life. Yet though we are not perfect, we areperfectible.
We have all witnessed ourselves and others failing indifferent areas of our lives. Some allow their failure tobe transformed into despair and defeat. Others are ableto get up, move on, and struggle again.
Some failures just look like failures. Other failuresreally are failures and need to be recognizedas such. Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch painter, is now hailedas one of the greatest artists of all time. But he did notenjoy the same acclaim and success during his lifetime.He painted 1,700 paintings; during his lifetime he soldonly one of them, for a mere eighty-five dollars. Almostone hundred years to the day after his death, one of hispaintings was sold at action for forty million dollars. Some failures just look like failures.
Imagine if after painting five pictures and not beingable to sell them, van Gogh had quit. Today wewould not have Sunflowers and so many of his otherworks to enjoy.There are hundreds of examples of men and womenwho have persisted despite failure or apparent failure.Another of these is Babe Ruth, one of the greatest baseballplayers of all time. Babe Ruth knew one thing:he could hit a baseball out of the park. He did what heknew, and he did it often—a total of 714 times. ButBabe Ruth had his share of failures too. He had to walkback to the dugout 1,330 times after striking out in frontof thousands of people. Imagine if after Babe Ruth hadstruck out one hundred times, he had said to himself,“Well, one hundred times is enough times to make anymistake. I quit.” And yet so often we quit long beforewe have even reached one hundred.
How do you respond to failure? When you fail, particularlyin your struggle to become a better person, how doyou respond?
Matthew Kelly From A Call to Joy May our loving God bless you! Mary Jo