It's gonna be a brighter day, brighter day
The first group I’m leading through Confirmation preparation is nearing an end. The second to the last session is this Sunday. This past week I had a meeting to plan the liturgy and another meeting this week to plan the last session. I just can’t believe that it’s that time already. It feels like we just had the first meeting. I don’t feel they’re ready. And I blame myself a lot for that. This past week or so I’ve been going over this entire preparation period and thinking about all the times I failed these teens. Times where I didn’t explain something fully, times where I bored them to tears, times when I didn’t get information out on time, times when I just didn’t do my best.
Here’s an excerpt from “In Conversation with God” for today:
It begins talking about the Bible story where Jesus is in the boat with Simon-Peter. Jesus tells them to cast their nets into the deep, even though they had tried fishing all day and came up with nothing. Simon-Peter listens and they bring in so many fish they can hardly handle them all.
“Very often, when we are waylaid by the weariness that comes from not seeing any results in our interior life or in the apostolate, when we have the sensation of total failure and have lots of reasons for wanting to give up, we should hear the voice of Jesus saying to us: Duc in altum, put out into the deep, begin once more, start off all over again, in my Name. The secret of all progress and of every victory is, in fact, to know how to begin again: to learn from a failure and to try once more.
It hit me as I read that. I can’t worry about all the failures I had with this Confirmation class, that’s the past. I can’t fix it. What I can do is to make this upcoming Confirmation class (starting a week from Sunday) better. I’ve already had new ideas coming my way (always through Adoration) to make the program better and to help the class learn more. The future is getting brighter. I hope and I pray that everything I’m planning works. And I pray I don’t make the same mistakes with this class. And finally, I pray that I can forgive myself for all the times I failed the current class and that my failures did not make that big of an impact on these teens.
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