Awakening
 |
| (Spiritual awakening by Robert Elia - found here) |
“Self-consciousness, it is said,
awakens in sin. At least it may be said with more complete certainty that it
knows itself, from the start, as consciousness of sin.
Auspicious knowledge, fortunate
shame! God does not merely draw certain benefits from certain ills, but,
through a more wonderful power than that which is behind the first creation,
through the power of his creative holiness, derives Good from Evil
and thereby raised us up. Truly, this is the most paradoxical example of the
idea which enchanted Pascal, that our wretchedness is always at the source of
our greatness. Fertile affliction, the mystery of that first moment of
consciousness! Felix culpa! Cannot the lure of divine love yet entice
us? Do we run the risk—because we ourselves are bad—of seeing in it only a
tyrannical injunction, and so of rebelling? Here consciousness of sin at once
intervenes, forcing us to bow our heads. And the first step is made in the way
of acceptance, which will be that of deliverance. Jam illuminari coepisti,
quia inest confessio 1 (ST. AUGUSTINE).
All the explanations of
psycho-analysis, even the most accurate, and all the diatribes against ‘the
feeling of guilt’ that some people think they are obliged to derive from such
explanations, will not prevail against this boon.”
~Henri de Lubac
1 “Already you are beginning to be enlightened, because
there is admission of guilt within you.”
Comments