Even Christ “failed”…
We have to acknowledge this truth and learn some precious lessons from it. We cannot deny that Christ is God made man to save us. As God, he is supposed to be all powerful and nothing is impossible with him.
And yet he failed miserably in the sense that in spite of his best efforts he did not manage to convert men into saints as he wants us to be. In fact, he was made to suffer and die a most ignominious death on the cross.
We, of course, know that his suffering and death do not have the last word for him and for his redemptive work. His death led to his resurrection, that final victory that conquered all our sins and death itself. This victory of his resurrection has the last word in his redemptive work.
This resurrection was not the result of human effort at all. It was God’s divine power that did it. We should not think that we too can resurrect to eternal life based on our human effort alone. Though we have to merit it, our own victory of the resurrection to eternal life should be understood as a gratuitous gift from God.
We should make some helpful conclusions from the considerations we have so far made above. And one of them is that our earthly life here will always end with death, the consequence of sin. It will be hounded always by our human weaknesses, temptations, failures, sins.
No matter how good and holy we try to be, we can never achieve our ultimate goal of being blessed forever while here on earth. Even the holiest man here on earth will die with problems and issues still unresolved, human goals not attained. We should not be surprised by this reality, much less worried and saddened by it. God assures us that he will save us if we only dispose ourselves to be with him, doing his will the best way we can.
So, it would not be right if we imagine our life here on earth as having the possibility of attaining the bliss that can only be in heaven. It would be wrong to picture Christian life here on earth as so perfect that there would never be any problem.
We just have to learn to contend with our weaknesses, temptations and sin that will always be with us till the end of time, not in the sense of justifying them, considering what is wrong as right, or sin as not sin at all. We just have to learn how to suffer them, convinced that if seen with faith, they can actually give us some good.
We have to learn how to convert our weaknesses, temptations, sins, and failures as occasions to go to God, asking for help and forgiveness, and deriving from them precious lessons, for good lessons there will always be. In short, our weaknesses, temptations, sins, and failures should not separate us from God, but rather lead us to him.
While we try our best to be holy by following God as closely as possible, we should never think that we can achieve a life here on earth that is completely free of pain and suffering in all their forms, much less, achieve the fullness of our being a child of God here on earth and with our own effort alone.
We have to firm up our belief that as long as we refer everything to God, out of love for him, everything --including our weaknesses, temptations, sins and failures-- will work out for the good. “Omnia in bonum.” (cfr. Rom 8,28)
Christ allowed himself to fail with his passion and death to identify himself completely with us in our worst condition, and to convert that condition into a way of our salvation with his resurrection.
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