God does not require that we be successful only that we be faithful.
– St. Teresa of Calcutta
Wednesday’s episode of Catholic Sprouts (a fantastic Catholic podcast for kids and adults!) caused me to contemplate the paradox of success vs. faith.
Success and its harbingers of pride, self-satisfaction, self-reliance, and glory can be positive – we WANT and NEED to succeed. I desperately want my school to grow, my school to improve, my school to be a beacon of faith and academic growth.
The reality is, however, that that is all my plan. Not God’s plan.
There may be overlap, there may be an exact confluence, but it does not matter what I want – or it should not matter what I want. What matters is what God wants.
God might want to see some failures, some problems, some issues – for it might make us stronger, it might make us more trustworthy, it might make us more faithful.
The paradox arises in that we should not strive for these failures, but we should strive for success in God’s terms. Are we bringing children and parents and staff members closer to Him? Are we modelling the faith for those we meet? Are we teaching Truth? Are we providing the academic skills our students and parents need to grow? Are we providing the emotional support that our students and parents need to grow?
If we are, we are succeeding on his terms. It might not mean a large surplus in the budget; a student in every seat; a headline in the LA Times (for good reasons!); or SGP over 75! BUT it will mean trusting in the Lord, in being fruitful caretakers of His children and His plan.
I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes from Henri Nouwen (Favorite delineating the quote, not the ranking of the quote by me amongst Nouwen’s writings):
There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development, and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another’s wounds. Let’s remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.
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