Breaking the Gates of Hell: A Holy Saturday Meditation

Working in the hospital setting as a Chaplain I get to experience with people some of the lowest of lows. I have been in the room as a patient has breathed their final breath. I have been there as the doctors and nurses have been called to a code and try as hard as they can to save the patient, but in the end, all of their efforts were unsuccessful. I have been with the family as the doctor has come out to tell them that their loved one has passed away. I have been with the grieving spouse who has lost all control of her bodily functions and reverted back to an infantile state, falling to the floor in a fetal position begging for God to return her husband. I have heard parents plead to trade places with their children who are suffering.

As I look around this room, I know that each and every one of us has someone who we would willingly trade places with to make sure that they never felt pain, or suffering, or loss. It is in our nature to love. We were created out of God's love, and we were ultimately rescued from eternal suffering because of God's love for us. The very God who created the heavens and the earth loved us so much that He willingly stepped into His creation to redeem His fallen people. The God who could speak planets into existence took on the form of a fragile human being; He took on our humanity and put aside His divinity to ensure that which He loved would not suffer. It is because of this willing sacrifice that we have the hope in the resurrection that we celebrate today.

But how did we get here? How did we get to the point where Jesus is able to offer us eternal life? What has taken place these past three days that allows us to take one of the darkest moments in history and turn it into the greatest celebration in the Church?

I want to recount with you the events of these past three days, from Maundy Thursday, to Good Friday, to the moments leading up to this moment, Holy Saturday. It's a painful journey, a reminder of the fact that we are sinners, it is a reminder of our imperfect nature and failures, but it ends with a reminder that despite all of that, we have been redeemed! Over the past few years I have had the opportunity to preach during Holy Week, each year leading up to tonight, Holy Saturday. My Maundy Thursday sermon speaks of the gift of the Eucharist, and in that the gift of hope; my Good Friday sermon speaks of the gift of salvation that we are given; and today I get to bring it all together and show how from the very beginning of our human history God had a plan to redeem us of the sin of our first parents Adam and Eve — and at the heart of all of it is perfect Love.

In my Maundy Thursday sermon, I spoke on how Maundy Thursday is perhaps the worst day in church history. In fact, it is probably the worst day in the history of all humanity. Maundy Thursday is the day that the embodiment of God's perfect love came to us in the person of Jesus and we rejected Him. It was on that last night that there was no hope left for Jesus. One of His best friends had betrayed Him for money, another was about to deny Him three times, and all the rest of His disciples would run away in fear for their lives. It was a moment of hopelessness and disunity, and it was at this very moment that Jesus gave us a sign of hope and unity, when He said, "This is my body and I give it to you."

In the establishment of the Eucharist Jesus gave the Church many things, one of them being hope. I was listening to a sermon given by one of my favorite authors, a Roman Catholic Dominican priest from England, and he was talking about this very moment, and he asked the question: "Have you ever thought how odd it is, that every Sunday we gather to remember the moment that the community ran away, when they were dispersed?" He continued on to say that, "we gather to remember the worst moment, because it is when it is darkest that God comes to us" — or, to rephrase, I like to say that it is when it is darkest that God shows up, and when God shows up He shows up in ways that you could never imagine!

It is in the gift of the Eucharist that we are reminded that Christ is always with us. No matter how dark the circumstances, Christ is present in those moments when we partake of His precious body and blood. We are given hope in the Eucharist, and in the words of our Lord He tells us as much. From the Gospel: "I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way, he took the cup also, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.' For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." The Eucharist is at the heart of everything we do in the Church and serves as a reminder of the hope that we have been given because of the suffering that Christ was willing to endure on our behalf.

As we journey out of Maundy Thursday and into Good Friday I pose the question, "How can the darkest day in the history of humanity be called Good?" In my Good Friday sermon, I share part of the Byzantine Catholic Liturgy, where at the culmination of the Liturgy of Supplication — a part where the people and priest are preparing for the Eucharist — the priest says, "On the night he was betrayed, rather when he gave himself willingly." Jesus gave Himself willingly. But why? To this I would like to share part of a sermon from Brian Zahnd, in which he says:

"The Bible is clear, God did not kill Jesus. Jesus was offered as a sacrifice in that the Father was willing to send his Son into our sinful system in order to expose it as utterly sinful and provide us with another way. The death of Jesus was a sacrifice in that sense. But it was not a sacrifice to appease a wrathful deity or to provide payment for a penultimate god subordinate to Justice.

Let me suggest that when we say Jesus died for our sins, we mean something like this: We violently sinned our sins into Jesus, and Jesus revealed the heart of God by forgiving us. When Jesus prayed, 'Father, forgive them,' he was not asking God to act contrary to his nature. When Jesus prayed, 'Father, forgive them,' he was, as always, revealing the very heart of God!

At the cross, we violently sinned our sins into Jesus, and Jesus absorbed them, died because of them, carried them into death, and rose on the third day to speak the first word of the new world: 'Peace be with you.'

When I say 'we' violently sinned our sins into Jesus, I mean that all of us are more or less implicated by our explicit or tacit support of the systems of violent power that frame our world. These are the very political and religious systems that executed Jesus. At the cross, we see where Adam and Eve's penchant for blame and Cain's capacity for killing have led us — to the murder of God! At Golgotha, human sin is seen as utterly sinful. God did not require the death of Jesus — but we did!"

If Maundy Thursday offers us the hope that we have in the Eucharist, it is in the events of Good Friday that we see the need of Jesus to redeem us from our sinfulness, to help restore the covenant that was made by our first parents, Adam and Eve, with God the Father. It is because of Jesus' willingness to take on our sins that we escape the worst fate that anyone could suffer — permanent separation from God.

In 2 Corinthians 5:21 we are told that "…He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." Though Jesus took on our human nature and while He was here on Earth was fully human, He did not sin. He resisted every temptation that we experience and He remained sinless, and after the violent crucifixion that Jesus suffered, He died, and we are told that He *descendit ad infernos* — He descended into hell. Jesus descended into hell in the place of every person in this room.

Just a while ago we entered the church in darkness. We did so as a reminder of the darkness that fell over the face of the Earth at the death of Jesus, but it was not all dark. We followed the light of the Paschal candle — a light that represents the light of Christ, a light that, like Christ, entered the darkness of hell at the moment of Christ's death. Imagine it: all of the lost souls who were separated from the love of God, waiting in darkness, all of a sudden surrounded by this great light — a light of hope, a light of love, the light that is about to destroy the power of death.

At the Easter Vigil Mass several years ago at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, the Prior gave an illustration to the students. He said:

"A notable contrast can be observed between Eastern and Western iconography of the Resurrection. In Western art, Christ is typically depicted in the very act of rising from the tomb, surrounded by prone soldiers who are either asleep, or amazed at what they are witnessing. In Eastern iconography, however, what is depicted is not the Resurrection as such, but Christ at the moment when He breaks open with His Cross the gates of hell and reaches out to Adam and Eve, with St. John the Baptist — His precursor even here — standing to the side. The scene is perfectly described in a passage from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday: 'Truly [Christ] goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; He wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains — He who is God and Adam's son. The Lord goes in to them holding His victorious weapon, His cross.'"

This phrase — *He breaks open the gates of hell with His Cross* — is what today is all about. It is about a God who humbled Himself to become like His creation; it is about a God who stepped out of heaven and came to Earth; it is about a God who let Himself be broken; it is about a God who let Himself be tormented; it is about a God who let Himself be nailed to a cross to suffer the consequences of sin so that His creation could be set free — and it was done for every person in the world. All you have to do is believe.

Let us pray.

*Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself: Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.*