St. Bridget of Sweden Archives - Amazing Catechists

Do you know about St Bridget of Sweden? If you don’t and you are a mom, you want to get to know her. Here is an excerpt of her biography from catholic.com:

“In fact, nothing [St Bridget of Sweden] set out to do was ever realised. She never had a pope return to Rome permanently, she never managed to make peace between France and England, she never saw any nun in the habit that Christ had shown her, and she never returned to Sweden but died, [a] worn out old lady far from home in July 1373” (read the full biography here).

Don’t you love her already? I do. How much of motherhood feels like failing at everything–only to die a worn out old lady! The dishes are piled up (again), the house is a mess (again), I yelled at the kids (again), I didn’t pay a bill on time (again), I forgot even to ask my husband about his day (again)…the list goes on. I’m not the only one, I know, who occasionally feels this way: the phrase “mom fail” has become commonplace in our culture. You know, how you sum up the story to your friends about the time when you earnestly praised your oldest for his generosity of spirit, sunny attitude, and helpful nature–only to end by calling him the full name of the wrong child. Mom fail.

Today I was sitting in the church mulling over the “both and”-ness of Catholic theology. (This is a topic for another post, but you will get the drift in a minute.)

I am nothing (who am I that the Lord knows my name) and yet I am Everything (to the one who loves me so completely that He died for me).

I am nobody (one of billions) and yet I am Somebody (an adopted daughter of the God who created all things).

I am insufficient (brimming with faults and inadequacies) and yet I am Enough (willingness to cooperate with His grace being the only requirement).

So much of what I have tried has looked like failure: various groups I have started, certain friendships, even the little blog off in the corner of the internet. Motherhood can feel like a failure at times; motherhood, which for me has had a way of exposing the depths of my temperamental deficiencies. I feel often–not always, because there are those occasional Supermom days–like a failure. Most days I am so quick to become angry, so preoccupied with my own thoughts as to brush aside an eager child’s slo-mo replay of a football move, so lazy as to ignore distasteful household chores, and yet so busy as to forget to read a book to my little kids.

There I sat in the church talking with God about this topic, and when I raised my eyes, I saw Him on the cross–a cross which, it struck me suddenly, sure looks a lot like failure. What about the cross looks successful? Without the eyes of faith, nothing. There were those three days before the resurrection when the cross, far from looking like part of a divine plan for success, looked like the very depiction of defeat.

Motherhood can feel like living in those three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection. In other words, I have the hope of the resurrection. I have the hope that these things I do daily–cleaning, feeding, loving, hugging, teaching, listening, holding, tending, training–will end in victory. But for now I live in the moment when they often look like failure; it’s precisely this interim wherein resides Hope.

I hope in the Lord, not in myself. If I were to hope in myself, my family would be on the Titanic. Instead, I hope in His mercy and in His grace, and I entrust everything–even what presently looks like failure–to the One who can and does redeem all things and who transforms what looks like failure into an eternal victory.

So I love St Bridget of Sweden because she reminds me that the world’s vision of success–implementing something productive, known, used, or profitable–is not God’s definition of success. Someone who failed by every worldly metric is, in fact, a saint. So what is success in God’s economy? We learn from Our Lord that obedience to God’s will is the very definition of success–even if the results look to all the world like failure. We have a saint to remind us of that, and should we forget her, we need only look at the cross.

Have you ever thrown your hands up in disgust and declared yourself a failure in some desired endeavor? We increasingly define failure as the inability to achieve or accomplish something that we want to obtain. How foolish must we seem in the eyes of Heaven, for the only failure in the universe is failing to leave all in the Hands of God.

We all complain from time to time when things do not go our way, when setbacks seem to become too commonplace, and when we fall on our face so often that cleaning it almost seems like a waste of time. Consider the cases of Louis and Zélie Martin , who each desperately wanted to enter religious life only to see their hopes dashed by academic issues in the first case and health issues in the second. While both of them moved on to start their own businesses, they shared in many others’ view that they had failed miserably in their most desired religious vocations. These two “losers” in the eyes of society were brought together in marriage by God’s providence yet, still desperate for lives of meditation and prayer, they agreed to live a state of virginal chastity. However, even that effort collapsed when their confessor asked them to give up their virginal agreement in order to rear children.

St. Bridget of Sweden is known for having composed a number of beautiful prayers in honor of Christ’s Passion, which was a passion of hers as well. She was married for about 25 years and bore eight children before becoming a widow. Often noted as an excellent example of balancing one’s domestic and spiritual life, Bridget had been devoted to practicing her faith and teaching that faith to her children throughout her marriage. After her husband’s death, Bridget founded a religious order, but was never able to completely organize it, watching others do that task. In fact, scholars cite that Bridget failed in all of the major things which she set out to do.

So pervasive was St. Bridget’s inability to accomplish the major things which she attempted that she is considered the Patroness of Failure. Despite this, we have those beautiful prayers and devotions to the Passion of Christ which she loved so much.

What do Our Lord’s Passion, St. Bridget, and the Martins have in common? All three are vivid representations that our earthly definition of failure is worthless in the eyes of God, Who alone has the blueprint for eternal salvation. We cannot fail as long as we place ourselves in the Hands of The Almighty, for our small stumbles and temporary disappointments are but stepping stones of God’s deeper plan for our lives and our purpose in this world. What of our duo of failures, Louis and Zélie Martin? One of their children became Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, proclaimed the youngest Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II. In fact, Louis and Zelie Martin were beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2015.

The Martins and Bridget remind us that God’s Majesty transcends earthly notions of defeat, as best demonstrated in Calvary. An ancient proverb attributed to a 16^th Century Portuguese Bishop states that “God draws straight with crooked lines”. This saying reminds us that things do not always go as planned, for we are imperfect human beings with human failings. However, trust and faith in God means that there is an ultimate sense and purpose to adversity, stumbles, and changes in our path. There is no coincidence, bad luck, or Plan B with God. The only tools we need to overcome our falls are faith and trust in the One who is well versed in turning falls into glory.

2016, Gabriel Garnica

Failure vs Success: Lessons from the Cross

There is no Failure in the Hands of God