Felix Culpa
While walking across campus in the fresh morning air, transitioning from “Professor of Philosophy” to “Tutoring and Resource Coordinator,” I composed the following prayer:
Dear Father,
If Jesus fully reveals who you are then you are most fully known as redeemer, and yet, to me, you seem so abstract and distant. I see Lord that I miss you in the manifold illusions of my self-sufficiency. Grant merciful release from my pride that I may heartily acknowledge my sin, and, in the very specific ways that I am broken and confused, experience you as the One who draws near to redeem.
As I continued to walk, I was reminded of a Church Father, whose name alluded me, but of whom I remembered coined the phrase “felix culpa,” which translated means “happy fault,” and by which he meant that the Fall gave humanity the opportunity to bear witness to an aspect of God’s nature that may otherwise have been hidden. Through the Fall we are enabled to experience an aspect of God’s love that would at best have been dimly perceived, but in Christ comes into full view. I think it is this reality that I was striving to express in my prayer.
