The feast of Bernard of Corleone today was my first chance to pray the new preface for "Holy Virgins and Religious." There was one change in particular for which I was grateful:
...For in the Saints who consecrated themselves to Christ
for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven,
it is right to celebrate the wonders of your providence,
by which you call human nature back to its original holiness...
I appreciate the "holiness." (The Latin is sanctitas) The old preface said "innocence."
The change reminds me that "the gift is not like the transgression." (Romans 5:15, NAB) The redemption we have in Christ is not just a restoration of the original innocence--or even the blessedness--of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Our salvation goes beyond even this to raising us to the holiness of the Origin himself, that we might come to participate in the infinite delight, joy, and creativity of the Blessed Trinity.
Jesus Christ is not God's 'plan B' for fixing what was lost in the fall. Christ accomplishes this, of course, but does even more, fulfilling God's eternal plan to make his rational creature a sharer in the originary, creative delight out of which everything else that is comes to be.
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