Raissa noted the death of Charles du
Bos. She quoted him as stating, “The mark of a great life is
failure.”
When I first read this, as a younger
person, I skimmed over this mysterious line. But, now, I understand,
at least is part, what this means.
First of all, one must understand that
success in the world is not the same as living a great life. One
knows “great” people who did not have success in this life. The
list proves to be endless: all the martyrs, such as SS. Edmund
Campion, or Philip Howard, or Margaret Clitherow; those who were
simple in the eyes of the world who never obtained “success”,
such as Joseph Cupertino, Gemma Galgani or Pier Georgio Frassati and
so on.
It is one thing to say that saints did
not have success, but another thing to note that they experienced
failure.
Failure is
absolutely not tolerated by modern society. If someone fails at a
career, or financially, or even in relationships, that person evokes
either disdain or pity, but not admiration.
So, what did
Charles du Bos mean by failure?
One can only
surmise, but here is my take on this mysterious sentence.
One must fail in
one's self, one's pride, one's own confidence in order to find the
love of God. One cannot be “successful” in the eyes of God. One
is merely a creature prone to sin and doomed to die.
In fact, the lives
of the saints reveal failure consistently.
For example, St.
Bernadette died from a long and painful disease, tuberculosis of the
bone, and yet, the Blessed Virgin showed her the location for the
sacred spring which has healed so many generations of faithful
Catholics. Bernadette may be see as a failure, one not healed through
one's own given charism.
Or, take the case
of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who resisted the Nazis and ended up in
prison, in a concentration camp, being put to death for sacrificing
his life for another. In the eyes of the State and many people, his
death would be considered the end of a life of failure.
Or, take dear and
glorious St. Joseph, hardly recognized even in the Gospels, yet
chosen to be the Foster-Father of Christ, the Son of God. Joseph, a
humble and lowly carpenter, living in poverty all his life, may
easily be seen as a failure in the eyes of the world.
To be a failure
could mean that one allowed God to strip one of all pretensions and
false views, to destroy the ego, and make room for God in one's soul.
Some people fail in
their careers, some in the eyes of their families, and yet, these
same people carry the light of God into the world.
To have a “great”
life may be a subjective ideal, but one cannot deny that those saints
whom the Church venerates form a groups of considerable failures.
