"Toiled in vain"

Many people in these difficult times have been forced to confront the bitter reality of failure.

In our employment, in our finances, in our relationships, and even in our spiritual lives, we may experience personal failures.

Sometimes these failures are failures of judgment. Sometimes the causes of the failures were truly beyond our control. Thus we must always strive to be as wise and prudent as we can be in our decisions.


Sometimes they are moral failures, for which we must truly repent.

But most of all, we must always remain faithful – most especially when we experience failure.

We must faithfully persevere.

If we are truly repentant of our sins and if we remain faithful, by the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, no matter what our failures, the words of the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading (Isaiah 49:1-6) can be ours as well:

Though I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength,
yet my reward is with the LORD,
my recompense is with my God.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, be merciful to me – a sinner.