O Felix Culpa

Vigil of the Lord’s Resurrection

19 April, 2014

O HAPPY FAULT! This night, a blessed end to a wretched story is wrought for us. It is the story of The Fall, when Adam and Eve, tempted by Satan, gained knowledge of good and evil from the tree of the forbidden fruit, and with it sin and death. Unable to taste from the tree of immortality, they and all generations after them have lived, not in God’s image of perfection but under the penalty of death.

But God did not despair of those whom, in the beginning, he had breathed life into. Through the ages he reached out to them to guide them back to Himself, sending Godly men of great holiness to prophesy the coming of One who would conquer death for all men and restore the perfection of creation, by breaking open the doors of Sheol and transforming death into eternal life.

Tonight, Christ rises from the underworld revealing the fullness of the mystery of our salvation. God has died in the flesh and Sheol cannot confine the incandesce of His glory. Adam face to face again with his Creator, not to suffer condemnation but to witness the unimaginable depths of God’s love to raise him from that fateful fall; and with him, his descents for all time.

For the God of Adam has become Adam's son. The Master of all creation has become a slave. From above the heavens He came to Earth and, suffering death, He descended even below the Earth, to rise in glory; completing the perfect sacrifice and fulfilling the eternal covenant of redemption. And all to save Adam from his fall; and with Adam, all men who seek the face of God with sincere hearts.

Rejoice, then, with me on this most sacred of nights. Rejoice that so great a fault should have wrought a far greater act of love; for what was lost to us in Adam has been regained in even more abundance in Christ Jesus risen from the dead.

O felix culpa,
quæ talem ac tantum méruit habére Redemptórem! 

O happy fault,
that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!