One of the features of the bicentenary of the death of our confrere Clement Hofbauer has been the variety of inspiring and useful texts in this series of C.Ss.R. Spirituality.  From the sheer holiness of the man to his missionary vision and accomplishments, to his interior life, we have been treated to insights into the man we right call our “second founder”.

In this reflection, I want to look at the failures in Clement’s life or rather at how he coped with failure. Sometimes in reading the lives of the saints, we are inclined to conclude “marvelous, to be admired, but hardly to be imitated”.  But we all have in common some brush with failure; indeed we may feel trapped in failure or afraid of failure.

Failures due to external forces – failures from within the Congregation

Perhaps the most public and dramatic failure for Clement was the suppression of St Benno’s on June 17th1808. The arrest, imprisonment and eventual deportation of the Warsaw community was the end of the transalpine Congregation for the time being.  To see such a fruitful ministry terminated and the community dispersed must have tested Clement’s trust to the full.  Less dramatic but no less disheartening was the failure of many, if not all, of the foundations Clement made across Europe.  From France to Romania Clement saw his efforts fail.

Such failures were due to external forces, political, social, and sometimes religious. A quite different level of failure came from within the Congregation itself. The Consultor General, Fr Leggio, accused Clement of “changing morning meditation for two sung Masses, no observance of silence, no afternoon acts” and for good measure, he accused Clement of refusing to return to Italy because “you do not want to have any superior over you”.

Even within his own Warsaw community, Clement heard voices raised to highlight his failures.  Fr Vannelet’s correspondence showed that some members of St Benno’s community were uneasy with the pace and style of Clement’s version of Redemptorist life.

Clement was not unaware of the limitations under which he laboured. So much of his earlier life had been patchy: some study, some experience of the hermit life, some theology at the University, very short Novitiate, skimpy familiarity with the traditions of the Congregation, little contact and less literature on the charism of the Congregation….all added up to feelings of inadequacy and a recipe for failure.  On top of all this, Clement had to cope with his own temperament: “I thank God I have this shortcoming (short temper) because if I didn’t have it, I would be tempted to kiss my own hand out of respect for myself” he ruefully admitted.

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