Glorious Cross April 15
O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer! (Easter Proclamation, Easter Vigil).
O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer! (Easter Proclamation, Easter Vigil).
How is it possible to minimize the guilt of
such a man? It is almost as though he is
being acquitted. Even the word “fault”
diminished the gravity of the offense.
Remember the consequences of his “peccadillo”: the birth of dishonesty, the abasement of
conjugal love, fratricide, the loss of one’s true country, death with all the
maladies that precede it, error, the tyranny of passion, pride, egotism, envy,
jealousy, war, materialism, sadness, addiction, rape, unequal distribution of
wealth, religious fanaticism, dictatorship, abuse of human rights, destruction
of the social order, sexual abuse, hatred, greed, abandonment of the poor,
secularization, racism, tribalism, stress, betrayal of friendship, corruption,
witchcraft, blasphemy, etc., etc., etc.
With what great effort at imagination could Adam’s sin be called a
“happy fault”? But it can, because it
facilitated the Incarnation and the exquisite act of love on the Cross. But does that mean that where sin abounds,
grace abounds the more? Or that the
victory of Christ has neutralized the sting of death forever? Or that sin and its consequences are but
weeds to be burned in the end by the angels with the wheat of virtue being kept
in an eternal Kingdom? O happy fault, if
it is so!
The bad odor of the mother polecat doesn’t stop
her young one from sucking at her breasts.
(Shi)
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