D,
Failure does not really exist. We do not know enough to call anything a failure. The verdict is never truly in because our vantage point is limited. We can imagine that we did not do what we set out to do but how do we know that was not the point in the first place? At the centre of our faith is resurrection morning, what we call Easter Sunday, but Friday was a dreadful day and Saturday was silent. No one knew what Sunday would bring on this side of reality.
Even further than one day, the days that followed, the apostles, the persecutions, the preservation of the traditions and letters and acts, did not unfold as heroic events. It seemed all crushed by the empire of the day. Then it conquered it. And these things, I am always afraid to raise them up, are just the physical signs of the tiny human events we know. Galaxies are always colliding. Things are happening in time and space that speak to outer realities that would literally melt our already fractured minds. Terms like “success” and “failure” must be comic relief for the cosmic arts.