Failure is not a reason to be sad.

In this age, failure has ceased to matter. For the same reason, so has success. And I am not thinking only of minor successes and forgivable failures. I am thinking of colossal failures, and brilliant successes. As such, in themselves, they have no value as success, nor penalty as failure.

Only whether one loves, and how much, matters. A loving failure blesses; an unloving success condemns. There will perhaps be times when one is successful for having loved much; and perhaps times when one has failed for lacking love. Yet in such cases, too, the terminus ad quem is irrelevent.

Give success to the work of our hands--an earnest enough prayer, but note that it means that God alone is Lord of success and failure, the author of history. A deeper petition than this is Give us this day our daily bread--the love, the caritas, that alone gives success its savor and failure its mysterious providence.