some thoughts

This being Holy Saturday, I thought this might be worthy of some meditation today:

Easter Sunday in the Christian calendar is the day on which the Resurrection of Jesus from the Crucifixion (on Good Friday) [took place]. The day in between is Holy Saturday, and is also the occasion for a mass specially designed for the occasion. In the Latin version, which was in use in the [Roman] Catholic Church almost universally until the early 1960s, one of the lines in this mass is: O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorum. We might translate this ‘O blessed sin [literally, happy fault] which received as its reward so great and so good a redeemer.’

[And in Book XII of his Paradise Lost, John Milton has the…]

“…archangel Michael console the fallen Adam by conveying the prophecy of how Christ will eventually come as a redeemer, and then a second time as the judge who will “reward / His faithful, and receive them into bliss, Whether in heav’n or earth, for then the earth / Shall all be Paradise, far happier place / Than this of Eden, and far happier days” (461-465). Adam responds thus (466-478):

  “O goodness infinite, goodness imense!
  That all this good of evil shall produce,
  And evil turn to good; more wonderful
  Than that which by creation first brought forth
  Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand;
  Whether I should repent me now of sin
  By me done and occasioned, or rejoice
  Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring,
  To God more glory, more good will to men
  From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.”

Amen! Source. The full text of Milton’s magesterial Paradise Lost is available here, which, despite his doctrinal heterodoxy (subordinationism, arminianism, et al), everyone ought to read at least once. Also, the full text of the Roman church’s Easter-Vigil Exultet (in Latin, with loose translation) is available here. (Lastly, for the like-minded type-A-ers out there, “riposte” was intentional…)