"Happy Fault"

"Happy Fault"

We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking. The journeys around the edges of sin lead us to long for a deeper life at the center of ourselves. Ruthless ambition can lead one to the very failure and emptiness that is the point of conversion. Is the ambition therefore good or is it evil? Do we really have to sin to know salvation? Call me a “sin mystic,” but that is exactly what I see happening in all my pastoral experience: Darkness leads us to light. That does not mean that we should set out intentionally to sin. We only see the pattern after the fact. Blessed Julian of Norwich put it perfectly: “Commonly, first we fall and later we see it – and both are the Mercy of God.” How did we ever lose that? It got hidden away in that least celebrated but absolutely central Easter Vigil service when the deacon sings to the Church about a felix culpa, the happy fault that precedes and necessitates the eternal Christ. Like all great mysteries of faith, it is hidden except to those who keep vigil and listen.

from Richard Rohr, Radical Grace, “Center and Circumference”