Doomed to Succeed
June 21, 2023
Albert Faraj
Last week, I wrote that one of the many ills of an absent fatherhood is that we are doomed to succeed. Doomed? For Americans, it’s hard to imagine how the drive to succeed can ever be seen as something negative. Let’s see how we get there.
We live in a time which is simultaneously permissive in the extreme while being merciless on anyone who makes mistakes. Our society makes no allowance for those who have messed up… there can be no redemption. The only solution is to cancel, to erase, the offending person.
And which of us has never done something wrong? Something we deeply regret, and wish we could undo?
When I was nine years old, I experienced abuse. Because I fully believed I had consented to it, I was filled with shame and hurt. And thus I hid what had happened from my parents. The anger and darkness consumed me for years until it finally boiled over. At the age of 13, I broke into my parents’ room and sobbed as I shared my story. I experienced nothing but love, openness and mercy from my father and my mother. I simply cannot imagine my life without that very vivid moment of mercy.
“Without the presence of the merciful Father, we are delivered up to our faults, without any possible remedy. There would be no forgiveness of error or sin. No place for weakness, frailty, or failure, all of which are nonetheless a part of our lives. We would be, in a way, condemned to succeed at life (emphasis added), something that really would be terrible.” - Fr. Jacques Philippe
In his exceptional book, Priestly Fatherhood, Fr. Jacques Philippe invites us to imagine the prodigal son returning to a fatherless home… which is to say, a merciless home: a home where there can be no redemption, no reconciliation or restoration.
Sadly, for many of us, this is how we have experienced life. We crave restoration but have yet to encounter the Father’s mercy… or are in need of a much deeper experience of it!
And the outcome of that lack is that we get stuck in a cycle of compensating for our shortcomings, of achievement, of striving for success. We become a type of the mythical Greek Atlas: condemned to hold up the proverbial world through ongoing achievements whether as punishment for our past or out of our desire to earn love. Our identity primarily revolves around how much we are achieving and not in Whose image we are made.
The good news is that He has already done something about this. And we are called to do something about it too. What has He done? What are we called to do?
We can find the answers to both of these questions as we approach this weekend’s solemnity of St. John the Baptist (from the part of the gospel that’s omitted from the reading):
“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has visited and brought redemption to his people. He has raised up a horn for our salvation within the house of David his servant, even as he promised through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old: salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show mercy to our fathers and to be mindful of his holy covenant and of the oath he swore to Abraham our father, and to grant us that, rescued from the hand of enemies, without fear we might worship him in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
“And you, child, will be called prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God by which the daybreak from on high will visit us to shine on those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” - Luke 1:68 - 79
Simply put: Receive tender mercy. Extend mercy tenderly.
Jesus invites us to stop trying to carry the world and to lower our aching arms into a receptive posture. Receive His yoke: the loving mercy of the Father. We cannot earn His love. He gives it to you now, freely. Let go of your striving, and receive your identity as a beloved daughter or son. Rest in this truth: there is nothing in either your or my past or present that He cannot or will not forgive. Out of love for us, He has gone to war to rescue us from the captivity of Sin and Death. He has set us free… let’s surrender to Him and receive.
And let’s go! We need to let people know what Jesus has done for you and for me. Through our words and actions may people experience His mercy.
Let us ask the Father to grant us His heart for others. The heart his Son, Jesus, has shown us. Come Holy Spirit, and convince us that we have a merciful Father. Direct our gaze to the horizon for “the daybreak from on high will visit us to shine on those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
St. John the Baptist, pray for us.
