(Descended into Hell)
Today, the Catholic Church may have faced another controversy on the New Missal that will be initiated in the First Advent of 2011.
One of the most controversial articles of the Apostle’s Creed which expresses words “was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead;”
The above phrase may have troubled our understanding. Does Jesus really descended into Hell? We may understand it differently but few may say that Jesus can’t go to hell because of his being Divine as God and being the son of the Creator. Let us try to review the phrase “descended into hell” to Latin which is translated as “descendit ad Inferos”
The word hell (inferos) doesn’t mean “the eternal damnation” written in the scripture. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that; (CCC 633); Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell" - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God.480 Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into "Abraham's bosom":481 "It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham's bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell."482 Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.483 (CCC 635); Christ went down into the depths of death so that "the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live."485 Jesus, "the Author of life", by dying destroyed "him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and [delivered] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage."486 Henceforth the risen Christ holds "the keys of Death and Hades", so that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth."487
Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. . . He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him - He who is both their God and the son of Eve. . . "I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. . . I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead."488
Today we live in a world and a church in which this kind of brokenness and attitude are becoming more the rule than exception. There is a major thing to live beyond, a broken marriage, abortion, a religious commitment that did not work out, pregnancy outside marriage, a betrayed trust, broken relationship, a soured affair, a serious mistake, a searing regret. A sense of sin that is irrevocable coupled with hopelessness. We – the church needs a theology (spirituality) of brokenness which relates failure and sin seriously enough to redemption. A theology that teaches us that even though a mistake that cannot be undone can let us live happily and with renewed innocence through the grace of God’s forgiveness, that God does not just give us one chance but that every time we close a door he opens another one for us. A theology that challenges us not to make mistakes, that take sin seriously, but which tells us that when we sin we are given the chance to take our place among the broken, among those whose lives are not perfect, the loved sinners for whom Christ came. A theology that tells us that mistakes are not forever, that they are not even for a lifetime. A theology that teaches us that God loves us as sinners and that the task of Christianity is not to teach us how to live but to teach us how to live again and again.
Our savior Jesus Christ descended into hell (abode of the dead) where lived the souls of all the good and just persons who had died since the time of Adam, once HE took them with him to heaven.The doctrine descended into hell is a doctrine about LOVE. God’s love for us and the power of that love to go to all lengths, to descend to all depths and to go through every barrier in order to redeem a wounded, huddled, frightened, paranoid, separation and unfree humanity.
By dying on the cross, Jesus Christ shows his love for us in such a way he descends into our private hells. His love is so compassionate that it can penetrate all barriers we construct by closing a door for him because of our hurt, fear, unworthiness, despair, sinfulness and hopelessness. Christ does not need a door knob to enter closed doors. Christ can enter rooms and hearts that are locked out of sins and sickness unlike our human love it is not left helplessly knocking at the door, it does not require strength to open it himself.
There is no hell, no private hell of wound, depression, fear, sickness or even bitterness that God’s love cannot and will not descend into.
Inspired by: (The internet Monk by Michael Spencer, the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Forgotten Among the Lilies by Ronald Rolheisser, Conventual Fransican Friars (OFM Conv.))
ad inferos (below) NOT ad infernos/infernum - that is, the place of the dead/Hades/Sheol NOT Gehenna (the second death).
ReplyDelete'below' is our common grave surely of all humanity - all that is flesh dies.
'bosom of Abraham' is reserved for Jews (a division of Sheol?); the just before him (anticipatory faith?)
Yet 'He shall come to judge the living and the dead' - is this those who die between His descent to the Dead and His Second Coming? Or then again the great judgement illustrated elsewhere as all appear before Him - we die but once and then the judgement .. so we are judged but once ... your intitial material leads to more questions
But your observation on the wilingness of Christ to be subject to death as an indicator of his love for us and your taking it to the extent of His being able to enter the hidden parts of our hearts where the precursor of death in the guise of sin - the sin within as well as that 'waiting at the gate' to swallow us - the temptation within fosters the observed falling 'without' (ie outside in the world of the visible activity as opposed to the wicked heart and mind, their considerations, musings and intent).
ReplyDeleteThere is a reassurance that Christ can be with us to fight those interior battles ... it is plesant to think about this. Protestantism would say that we must invite that help - you appear to say that He comes unbidden to help - Perhaps there is truth to both or a compromise possible ie for the baptised Christian He is there, we need to cooperate with that presence, with that power to defeat sin, death and the devil ...