Friday, July 14, 2023

Romanus Cessario on the Happy Fault (Felix Culpa)

  

The Happy Fault

 

The sacraments of the New law enjoy an objective efficacy based on the supreme work of Christ. The word “objective” in this context points to the power of God at work in the sacramental action. The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes Aquinas, who writes that “the sacrament is not wrought by the righteousness of either the celebrant of the recipient, but by the power of God.” (CCC no. 1128, quoting Summa theologiae III.68.8) Further clarifications are required in order to understand properly how the sacraments work, as it were, objectively. Obviously, any suggestion of magic or superstition remains out of place. Instead, the sacraments of the New Law figure in the work of image-restoration and image-perfection, categories that represent God’s twofold justifying action in the sinner.

 

Detachment from sin and the sanctification of the human person, both body and soul, requires that the Christian believer properly understand the providence of God as it pertains to the divine permission for man’s sin. As with Adam’s sin, the sins of his progeny always can become expressions of a felix culpa inasmuch as the sacraments of the New Law exist to restore people to friendship with Christ that not only exceeds, obviously, the state of sin but also exceeds whatever natural happiness a person may discover in this world. (Romanus Cessario, The Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2023], 56)