THE BLESSED FAULT

Author: Zofia Kossak
Year: 1989 (1953)
Publisher: Instytut Prasy i Wydawnictw "Nowum"
Language: Polish

”Felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem!” Oh happy fault that has earned us such a redeemer. The sin of man is great. The love of God is greater. And if we can love Him back by only a fraction of the love He has for us, we will be redeemed by his eternal glory.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:7.

Yet man is merely a temporary compilation of earthly matter and his wit and heart are weak and ephemeral. How is he supposed to contain the grandness of a divine love without fumbling, dropping it into the mud, dragging it through the ashes and dust from which he himself came? This is the question that Zofia Kossak seems to ask in her novel “Blogoslawiona wina” (not available in English but a direct translation might be “The Blessed Fault”).   

The plot is relatively simple and the number of crucial characters limited to a handful. Mikolaj Sapieha, a Polish-Lithuanian duke and war hero in the early 17th century falls ill which bereaves him of all vigour, spirit, and vitality for which he was formerly admired. A broken man, he wanders the corridors of his castle if he gets out of bed and walks at all. After an embarrassing episode during a wolf hunt, his reputation and that of the entire house of Sapieha are put at serious jeopardy when his actions are deemed cowardly. Since no known medicine has been able to remedy his condition, his remaining friends see no other solution than turning to God by means of a pilgrimage to Rome. Reluctantly, but well aware of the damage his illness has dealt to his good name, he embarks on this onerous campaign. Well in Rome, he prays to the icon of Our Lady of Guadeloupe and is miraculously healed. From this moment, Sapieha becomes obsessed with acquiring the icon and bringing it back to his duchy in Poland.

Kossak explores several important angles of religious devotion and zeal in this short novel. How is a Christian supposed to behave when God tells him to act in a way that is contrary to the will of God’s own representative on Earth? What is the difference between a devotee and a zealot? What emotional and intellectual process inside a believer drives him or her to iconolatry?

Zofia Kossak was herself deeply religious and is still today respected by the Polish Catholic Church as a heroine and a role-model. In her Christianity, actions speak louder than words. Her attitude to the present life was that each and every one of us can be God’s answer to someone else’s prayers. Her creed seems to have been that it is acceptable to hate beliefs and actions but never the person who carries or commits them. During the Second World War, she translated this principle into action when, although explicitly condemning Judaism, she put her life on the line to rescue the lives of hundreds of Jews who would otherwise be murdered by the Nazis. Her actions earned her the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations from the state of Israel.

Against this backdrop, “Blogoslawiona wina” gives a fascinating insight into the thoughts of a devoted Catholic who may have had reason to harbour bitterness and rancour toward the Holy See which under Pope Pius XII refused to take a stand against the German occupation of Poland and the unimaginable crimes against humanity that followed. While Mikolaj Sapieha has the highest regard for the Church and her leaders, he concludes that the direct dialogue he believes to have with Holy Mary must have precedence. What looks like religious single-mindedness and zeal to us (and Sapieha does contemplate and finally discard this possibility) is a response to a calling to someone else. The Pope, after all, speaks with a voice from this world. There is nothing in Church doctrine that says that God or indeed His Motiher cannot speak to any of us directly, as proven by any and all of the catalogue of saints venerated by the Roman Catholic Church.

SPOILER ALERT

Mikolaj Sapieha’s request to be granted ownership of the Our Lady of Guadeloupe-painting having been repeatedly and categorically rejected by the Pope and his Cardinals, leaves the Polish nobleman with no other option than to steal it. Hounded by the joint forces of every Italian knight and squire, he somehow manages to smuggle the painting to Poland where he puts it on display in his own parish. When pilgrims from near and far are healed while praying to it, he takes it as a sign of approval by Holy Mary herself. If she had disapproved, his reasoning goes, she would not have dispensed her grace in his church.

The Pope, as can be expected, is furious and bans Sapieha from the Church declaring him dead to Christianity and forever condemned to walk as an outcast among his people on this earth. This comes as a heavy blow to a man who in his own view has done nothing but abide by the will of the Mother of God. Sapieha, consequently, removes himself from all social life, breaks off his daughter’s engagement with the son of his best friend, withdraws from politics and even pushes away his wife and sons. Even though he is not allowed to enter any holy place, he finds a way to pray to the painting every night when no one is in the church. Despite several attempts by his rapidly shrinking group of friends and confidantes to lift the ban, the Pope remains relentless.  

When one day, the new king of Poland declares that he intends to marry a Protestant princess and calls for the parliament to convene in Warsaw to approve of the union, Sapieha surprises everybody by giving the order to assemble a travel party. At the parliament, despite all of the other noblemen arguing for the union in obvious attempts to win the new king’s favour, Sapieha alone challenges the decision on moral, patriotic, and historical grounds and cajoles the monarch into calling the wedding off. For his intervention, he is rewarded by the Holy Father who lifts the ban and reluctantly grants the icon to him as a gift.

And so Kossak concludes, that the politics of man have nothing to do with the will of God. The same way the condemnation was instated as a response to the embezzlement of an earthly object (and possibly the assault on earthly pride), it was also revoked by an act of earthly politics and power. When Sapieha again travels to Rome to pay tribute to the Holy See after having been pardoned, he finds that the presence of the Mother of God is the same in the chapel where the Our Lady of Guadeloupe used to hang. The duke’s spat with the Pope was a mundane affair all along and Sapieha’s trespass, Kossak seems to argue, never was against God. Nor could it be for as long as his devotion and submission were genuine. For even though our minds, hearts, and bodies are insufficient vessels to carry the love of God, our souls were made for this unique purpose.