"Felix Culpa"

Oh necessary sin of Adam, Which Christ blotted out with his love; O Happy Fault that merited Such and so great a Redeemer. (Easter Proclamation)

The Latin expression "Felix Culpa" derives from the writings of St. Augustine regarding the fall of Adam and Eve, which devastated human nature with the stain of original sin, and like a genetic disease has been passed down from generation to generation.

In light of Christ's resurrection, St. Augustine reinterpreted in a "positive" way the sin of Adam and Eve, extending in this manner, the positivity of the present to the negativity of the past.  For this reason the Church has inserted this declaration of the saint into the Pascal Proclamation sung before the Liturgy of the Word at the Easter Vigil Mass, during which the resurrection of Christ is proclaimed.

In our everyday life we encounter examples of reinterpretation of the past in the light of the present: for example, the woman who gives birth; in the face of the great joy she feels holding her baby in her arms, she quickly forgets the pain of the labour or looks at the pain remotely.  The fact that the bottle is half filled with wine is irrelevant; what matters is one's interpretation of the fact: for the pessimist the bottle is half empty, for the optimist it is half full.

"There are no misfortunes to which blessings do not follow"
The horse of an old farmer escaped to the mountains. "Bad luck," declared his neighbours with sympathy, to which the old man retorted, "Bad luck or good luck who knows?" A week later the horse returned with a herd of wild horses and this time the neighbours congratulated the farmer of his luck. His response was the same "Good luck or bad luck who knows?" It was then that the farmer's son while trying to tame one of the wild horses fell and broke his leg.  All but the old man saw this as bad luck, he insisted on repeating "Bad luck or good luck who knows?" Some weeks later the army passed by and recruited all the capable young men for service, except the son of the old farmer who was still walking on crutches..."

The apple from the Garden of Eden was very good to look at; much of what apparently looks good can be bad and vice-versa, what appears bad can be good.  The words good luck or bad luck only make sense to the superstitious; the believer sees all that happens, good or bad, as divine providence directed towards a happy ending.

In the same way that the antimatter exists in opposition and in function of the matter, God created the possibility of evil, as an alternative to Himself, so that man would be free to love or to reject Him. It was the misuse or abuse of this freedom that created all the concrete evils, of which mankind has been suffering since that time.

In this way, since nothing existed before God and the possibility of evil was created by Him, we can conclude that God is indirectly responsible for the evil in the world. By placing that tree in the garden God knew the risk that He was taking.  On the other hand, the alternative of not creating the possibility of evil would make us into robots, puppets, extensions of God but not personal beings, free, autonomous and independent like God willed us to be from the beginning.

For the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). With the death of His Son, God has paid the price for having created the possibility of evil so that man can be free. The divine providence tells us that nothing happens that is foreign to the will of God. If God allows evil it is because He has in mind a greater good. The same divine providence invites us not to interpret any happenings, whether individually or as a community, disconnected from His plan. Each event ought to be seen as a piece of a puzzle, which only God has the whole vision; it is up to us to have the faith that God is guiding our personal story as well as that of humanity to a greater good and a final triumph.

We all have examples in our lives of how "there are no misfortunes to which blessings do not follow". It was a quarrel between St. Paul, Barnabas and Mark that led the latter to leave the group and to follow St. Peter instead, in this way we had a gospel born out of the preaching of St. Peter, the Gospel of Mark; as we had later another born out of the preaching of St. Paul, the Gospel of Luke.

When St. Anthony of Lisbon went to Italy, his job was to wash pots and pans. It was only when the preacher, who was assigned to preach at the ordination of a priest, fell sick that St. Anthony was taken out of the kitchen and put in his proper place, the pulpit; where he very quickly proved to be a superb preacher.

It was illness and the time of convalescence that changed the lives of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola and many other saints. Felix or blessed illness we can say because it made them stop and come off the path of life they were taking. We would not have them as saints if it was not for the sickness that made them reconsider their lives and its worth.

"Felix Culpa" of Our Life
"God writes straight with crooked lines" and goes one step ahead of us. The failure of plan A, with the fall of Adam, God quickly orchestrated a plan B; when humanity killed his Son, God raised him up.  When we look back at the history of humanity we can see all the crooked lines where God has always written straight.

"Happy Fault" is an exclamation made in the present over something that happened in the past.
"Happy Fault" is the positive present view of a negative past reality.
"Happy Fault" is the reinterpretation of negative past in light of positive present.

The parable of the wheat and weeds (Matt. 13:24-30) points out that in the world and in society as much as the wheat and weeds are interwoven, evil and good are also interconnected that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other therefore it is better not to be hasty, but to trust in the divine providence and wait until the end when everything will be crystal clear.

The Happy Fault  Is not only applicable to the history of salvation of mankind but also to our personal story of salvation. We can only feel saved when looking at the negativity of our past  and perceive it as our "Happy Fault".

The first step is to take accountability of all that we did and all that has happened to us.  We cannot blame others, say that it was the devil that tempted us, or appeal to our inherited genes, blame our social environment or our parents. It is true that all these are factors that mold us and contribute to make us the person that we are today; it would be a mistake to deny their importance, but once we are aware of our past then it becomes our responsibility if we let it ruin our present and future. Since there are no perfect societies, families, parents and education, we need to take responsibility for the wrong that was done unto us and forgive the wrong doers; the same approach must be taken to everything wrong we did in our past. Only in this way can we take full control of our lives.

By being responsible does not mean to settle and wallow in the type of guilt that is false, unhealthy, cruel, abusive and depressive; these are the "quicksand" of a spiritual suicide. To get out of this stalemate it is necessary to look at our life in its entirety, chanting our Happy Fault and prove to ourselves that in our own life there are no evils from which good does not come.

In life we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. Each negative fact is a gift that life gives us. Every present comes inside a box; the box can be viewed as the negative fact, its content or the gift on the other hand, is a lesson that this negative fact provides us or what we can learn from it.

I met a young woman who could not overcome the trauma of having been sexually abused by her uncle and so being able to chant her Happy Fault, until the day when she realized that her negative view of sex in some way had freed her from a life of promiscuities, unwanted pregnancies and abortions that were the realities for some of her friends.

There are no perfect families, nor parents, nor perfect uncles, nor cousins, nor teachers, nor catechists; way before we become self-aware, before we know who we are, sin has already touched us in a thousand and one ways.

Chanting or declaring "Happy Fault" at the wrongdoings of the past does not change them into good, nor justify, nor excuse us or those who practiced them; it only helps to reinterpret them in light of our present situation in order to place them in the general context of our lives and acknowledge that at times they came for good so it is up for us to look at them in a less negative manner. This is the path to be redeemed from our past.
 
What Matters is the final result
If the wicked turns away from all their sins that they have committed and keep all my statures and do what is lawful and right, they shall surely live. None of the transgressions that they have committed shall be remembered against them; for the righteousness that they have done they shall live.(...) But when the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity (...) None of the righteous deeds that they have done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which they are guilty and the sin they have committed, they shall die. (Ezek. 18:21-22, 24)

This scripture passage suggests that what really counts is how we are at the end of our lives; what counts is the present moment; who and what we have become. The positivity and negativity are like the scaffolding in the construction of our life.  As proposed by the prophet Ezekiel, God doesn't have memory of the good and the evil that we did during our life; what is important is not so much the acts but the attitudes; or it is the person we turned out to be, in the final outcome of our lives. It is therefore the final result that counts; for this reason, as the Spaniards say with some irony "may God take us right after we've confessed".

Inspiring us in the parable of the talents, we can be certain that God does not ask of us what He did not give us; inspiring us in the parable of the sower, we can be certain that God does not ask anyone to give Him back 100 percent; He is equally happy with 60% or even with 30%, what is important is that we don't hide the talent but render an account of it; He asks only that we make an omelet with the eggs that we were given and never conclude, to ourselves that we don't have enough eggs to make it.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Things money cannot buy

God commands in the next world, money commands in this one.  There is nothing that money does not make you do; everything and everyone has a price.

What is your price? We hear this so often spoken in the movies; money buys everything and everyone; nobody resists the Mammon.  People who go to the point of selling their honour, their dignity and the truth, do so, on the hope that money will buy them everything that is essential for self-fulfillment and happiness. The truth though is that money, far from buying everything, cannot even buy what we really need in life.  For this reason it is not difficult to find people who are depressed and unhappy among the rich, and people who are happy and self-fulfilled among the poor.

Money can buy a bed, but not sleep; it can buy food, but not appetite; it can buy books, but not intelligence; it can buy luxury, but not beauty; it can buy a house, but not a home; medicine but not health; social gatherings but not love; toys or amusements but not happiness; a cross but not faith; an expensive plot in the cemetery, but not a place in heaven. There is nothing more valuable than life and life is a gift from God; love, which is the source of life, is free and cannot be bought or sold. In conclusion, money only buys the material goods that are essential to stay alive; but has nothing to do with what life really is; in fact, life is not a commodity that can be bought, sold, or owned.

Princess Diana of Wales had everything that a young woman could ask for in life: youth, beauty, power, money, fame, blue blood and two precious sons.  Nevertheless she was not happy because she lacked the most important thing which is love, and money can't buy it.  To look for love, she abandoned everything and it was in that search that she lost her life.  There are others who having the essential, which is love, do the opposite, spending their lives busily searching for everything that the princess had and despised, and in so doing they end up losing what is the most important, love which they already had and took for granted.

Like Diana of Wales, St. Benedict of Nursia, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis of Xavier, St. Anthony of Lisbon, St. Isabel of Portugal, Nuno Alvares Pereira, Beatriz da Silva etc., the saints of the Catholic Church, for the most part, were from the upper-middle class, educated, young, handsome and beautiful, rich and some from nobilities. They, however, abandoned everything for Christ, as St. Paul had done, "I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." (Phil. 3:8)

The Worth and the Worthlessness of Poverty
The poverty exalted in the Bible is not the kind that prevents human beings to sustain their lives and live with dignity. From the beginning, the Sacred Scripture presents us with a God who, far from being neutral or impartial, fights against this type of poverty. In fact, God is on the side of the poor against the rich, as seen in the Canticle of Mary (Luke 1:53).  Rejoice in the fall of the rich as such, but not in the fall of men. God wants conversion of the sinners not their death.  God is probably the only one who differentiates between sinners and their sins, condemning the sin, saving the sinner.

As religious, monks, friars and nuns, our vow of poverty arises from the beatitudes that Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of Matthew: the choice of poverty (Mt. 5:3).  This choice although inspired by the freedom from attachment to money, which can dominate the heart, is also motivated by the wish to be witnesses of God's love for the last, the marginalized, and the rejected by sharing in their condition.  We are looking to share in the condition of the poor in the same way that was done by Jesus "that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich." (2Cor 8:9)

The Vow of Poverty
As the religious vows of chastity, obedience and poverty make references to values that are eternal, those who embody them are turned into sacraments, ambassadors, signs and symbols of eternity for other Christians.  While living already, in the "here and now", the values that everybody is called to live hereafter in heaven, they see and censure realities such as money, power and pleasure for what they really are, meaningless to real life.

As to the vow of chastity, since in heaven there is no death, there is no need of marriage (Mt. 22:30). To live in chastity, or universal friendship, is what awaits us all.

As to the vow of obedience what the religious want to censure is the love for power, which so many have; the mania of wanting to get to the top, thinking that once there, there is no need to obey anyone.  By obedience, the religious want to demonstrate that it is by doing God's will that we find fulfillment.

The need for material goods is related to the fact of having to sustain life in its biological implications. In heaven, we will have a glorified or spiritual body (1Cor 15:44), made in the image and likeness of the physical one but not the physical body itself.  Since it is an immaterial body, there is no longer need to possess or store material goods.

Many people live with the illusion that, by possessing more means of life or resources, they will live longer or can prolong life.  Experience itself proclaims the truth that one cannot love both God and mammon.  To possess much more than what is necessary to keep us alive, prevents us from “storing up treasures in heaven" (Mt 6:19-20), and spending life cultivating human values.  It is these values that give meaning and relevance to our life, both individually and collectively, and sustain it in eternity as part of our spiritual body, with and in which we will live with God.

Living the vow of poverty, in the context of a religious community, highlights the value of sharing common goods, as well as the value of using and managing responsibly without owning them.  We firmly believe that only God is the true owner of everything that people think they possess.  We own nothing, not even ourselves or our lives; we are only stewards of our time, talents and treasures and of this stewardship, we will one day render account.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC