Blessed Teresa of Calcutta once wrote: "God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful". So much today is orientated towards "success" in a worldly sense, and even Christians and the Church herself at times, tends to think in terms of worldly success: of numbers and projects, of progress and image. Yet when we look at the life of Jesus it might best be understood as a failure in worldly terms.
In the Acts of St Genesius we see a man who was obsessed with worldly success. A renowned actor and comedian, his success rather than satisfying his desires only intensified them and in order to do better, to become more famous, to have more money, he was prepared to mock and use a persecuted people, and yet he was still not happy. There is nothing sinful in success, it may well come, but if it is what we crave above all then we will not be satisfied, not in the depths of our being.
As Christians we must seek to be faithful to Christ. In this secular age that may well mean we are not a worldly success, but we will be precious in the eyes of God and that is more important that all the riches and honour the world can confer. After all, the world is already passing away, only God and the eternal things remain forever.
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