The irony of success

I've started to read the epic Les Miserables...my favourite musical by all means and so I decided I should undertake the rather, uh, LARGE, task of reading the book....its 1200 pages in my version, that would be 1400 pages if in the original french, how I'd love to read it in the original french...but alas a conversation for another day.

I am reminded today that in our society, as it was back in the early 1800's in France, that often success is seen as knowing the right people, owning the right things, having the "gold" (money or well literal gold!) so on and so forth. So many people clamour to know the people that have these things because they see a pathway for their own success. But in the first book in the Part One of Les Miserables, the author (Victor Hugo) talks about a monseigneur who honesty lives out his faith. He lives a poor life, a humble life and one of much love and as a result he was beloved by his parish...but not by the seminary students being ordained by him, for as Hugo says, "A saint who leads a life of excess denial is dangerous to be around. He could well infect you by contagion with incurable poverty, numbing of the joints used for climbing the ladder, and, in short, a tad more renunciation than you'd like. People flee from such squalid virtue." (pg. 44-45) The ironic craziness of this is that those who are best served to help those in need are doing the least about it...all in the name of success.

See Hugo makes the point that there were all these people in the church living the high life while many of the people of France were poor and suffering and here was a Bishop that truly loved his people and helped them...and because of that....no one wanted to follow him to learn from him...they wanted to step up that wretched ladder onto glory and fame and....success.

I have seen many people try to climb that ladder in our life and they fall short everytime for a few reasons. Firstly, you can't go anywhere without God. Secondly, success comes in love and relationships. How can you honestly see someone hurting and just walk past them? Some people use the misfortunes of some to build themselves up...so they don't walk past the hurting person, but they do use them as a step on their ladder to look like they're more pious or special or SUCCESSFUL. That's not to say that people shouldn't seek out their goals and be ambitious, that's quite okay and fine! It's even okay to own things and enjoy them. But when people hurt people by stepping on them (in whatever way that occurs) maybe those people need to sit down and do some thinking about what they're trying to achieve. Loneliness? Distaste? The loss of your soul and spirit (after you've given bits of it away to get to your success)? Or, can we be like this bishop and stop worrying about success and just love people, love the poor, the needy, the hungry, the homeless, the children, the unwell....love those that many in society would class as the "nobodies". Not to brag about it, but quietly and humbly, day by day just doing our best to do the best for those around us. Not to build ourselves up because we've done good deeds but because we love the people we love and we will ALWAYS have enough love (and forgiveness and repentance where needed) if we ask God for it....even if you don't know him, he'll still give it to you.

"In loving the least of these, you have loved God himself." (Paraphrase, Matthew 25:40)