More thoughts on failure

3 Ways to Fail. Which is Yours? Failure, we hear, is relative; but the truth is that it never feels that way. Failure feels absolute. It feels permanent. And it can sap our energy faster than almost anything else. But it doesn’t have to. By Jeannette de Beauvoir

Just ask Steven Spielberg, who applied multiple times to film school, and was rejected every time. Just ask Sir Isaac Newton, who was pulled out of school to run the family farm—badly. Just ask Vera Wang, whose dream was to make the 1968 American Olympic skating team. Or ask Fulton Sheen, who had thousands of people worldwide love him, listen to him, read his books. In the midst of a brilliant career and unheard-of fame as a media evangelist, he was suddenly withdrawn from the limelight and made bishop of a small diocese in upstate New York in a move that was the result of complex issues and certainly not what he himself wanted. Whatever the reason, Sheen went obediently. Into oblivion. Into failure, we might say. But he dealt with his failure in three ways, all of which can teach us something: He knew he was in the right, but didn’t use his media platform to continue the feud. He quietly accepted as God’s will what many saw as injustice, and went where he was sent to see what good he could do there. Humility. He turned to other ways of reaching people, and wrote his greatest book, The Life of Christ, during this time. Listening. He gave away most of the millions of dollars he’d earned throughout his career and lived simply. Generosity. We recently lived through Holy Week and Peter’s terrible failure of faith. When Jesus said he’d been praying for Peter, Peter replied, “Lord, I am ready to go to prison and to die with you.” Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, before the cock crows this day, you will deny three times that you know me.” We don’t know exactly how Peter responded to Jesus, or what he felt when Jesus’ prediction came to pass. He probably spent a lot of sleepless nights berating himself. He could have spent the rest of his life depressed and angry at himself, because—well, after all, how much worse can it get? Denying Christ? Generations of martyrs have died terrible deaths so they wouldn’t do what Peter did that night. But Jesus knew what Peter would do. And, even though he knew, it was to Peter that he entrusted his Church. He could have chosen one of the other Apostles, one who wouldn’t deny him, one who would stand fast. He chose Peter. He chose the one who lived through the greatest failure of all, and said to him, you are the rock. You are the one who will guide my Church. You are the one I choose. Jesus knew it wouldn’t be easy for Peter to work through his failure, to accept it and go on in spite of it.  Jesus knows that we all fail,  all the time,  and that’s what he’s asking of us, too:  to fail, and to go on.  To fail, and to still accept his will.  To fail, and to turn those failures into something else. Like Peter, like us, Fulton Sheen must have had his share of sleepless nights, distressed over his failures. He hadn’t been able to keep his media ministry together. He wasn’t a particularly able administrator. Sometimes failure is God’s way of keeping us humble. Of keeping us on the right path, or bringing us gently over to another. Of opening up our eyes and ears to something that God wants of us. And our job is to get over the failures, let go of our egos, and hear what God has in store for us next. Fulton Sheen didn’t give up. Peter didn’t give up. And neither should we. by Jeannette de Beauvoir