Failure. What a day to celebrate failure.
This weekend, we as a church assemble unusual numbers, possibly augmented by the promise of free “swag” in the form of green branches, to mark what has become one of the hallmarks of the entire ecclesial undertaking: failure.
The first place our eyes fall in their search for failure is on Christ Himself, the one who attracted our Hosannas, who drew his disciples and aroused in them such hopes for success; the Messiah, after all, was expected to deliver Israel form all her oppression. The Christ, the Anointed One, was to bring the help of God and deliver the long-elusive victory. Then it all crashes to pieces in His humiliating death on the cross.
But, even as we see all the indicators that Jesus has failed, we recognize what brought about the other failure of this day: the failure of the disciples. The ones closest to the Lord, carefully prepared and even forewarned, looked at Christ’s Passion, and they saw failure, too; which in turn prompted their failure. Peter denied Him, the other apostles fled for their lives, and we know that the next time they would assemble it would be in secret, and in fear. Arguably, this is the first failure of the Church, even before the gift of the Holy Spirit confirmed them as the Church.
But even as we watch in horror, we know that what looks like failure is in fact part of the plan. We know that this is, in fact, the great undoing of man’s every failure since the creation of the world. In fact, the reason we go through this every year is to remind ourselves what the path to victory looks like, that at a certain point, and by certain standards, it looks like failure. Christ’s rejection by the people He came to save, His condemnation, torment, and execution, is the path to victory because it is undertaken in obedience to His Father and in love of the very ones Who reject Him, and all the ones who fail Him.
Which means that even as He dies on the cross, Jesus does it in order to repair the damage done by the failure of His apostles and His friends, their failure that He foresees and predicts. And once He is raised from the tomb, the first thing He does is bring that reparation to bear on the ones who failed Him. That very experience of restoration after failure is part of the identity of the Apostles, who became the Church when the Holy Spirit at last did cascade onto them.
Which should remind us that it is part of our identity, too, as part of the Church, and that it is woven into the very being of the Church herself. All her members, even her most illustrious and important members, fail one another, and fail the Lord whom they aspire to serve. Apparent failure is a recurring motif throughout of the life of the Church up to our own time.
This weekend’s exercise in reliving that first failure should fortify us against the despair that looms whenever the Church seems to be shot through with sin, malice, or incompetence; when civilization itself, built on the foundations of Christian faith, lapses into the worst sort of barbarism and mutual destruction; and when we ourselves, so blessed by grace and revelation to know our Lord and be filled with His Own nourishing life, lapse into inexplicable rottenness.
The precedent of this failure, too, we relive every year, as we prepare to relive its redemption. There is no better way to nurture our gratitude for that first seeming failure and all it cost our Lord, than to apply for our portion of the purchased restoration, which we do by admitting all our own failures to the Lord in the Sacrament of Penance, and hearing those hard-won words spoken to us: your sins are forgiven.
Oh happy fault, oh necessary sin of Adam, that won for us so great a redeemer! (Exsultet, the Easter Proclamation). This is how we celebrate failure.
Monsignor Smith
