“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into Hell;…”
I am contributing a reflection today to give Carolyn some much needed time off to attend to some pressing needs in her class work. I am therefore taking some liberty in my reflection in that it does not exactly adhere to today’s readings except for the last line in the reading from Hebrews that confirms that Jesus is the “…same yesterday, today and forever”.
I began reciting the rosary more regularly after I did my Cursillo weekend a few years ago. Before that, I really did not say it much, nor did I actually pray regularly. When I began praying the rosary more I realized that, hey, this Creed is not the one I remember saying. It is shorter, more to the point. But the thing that really stood out was the last line of the paragraph I cited at the top of the reflection. “..He descended into Hell..”. WHAT?!! He went WHERE?!
The idea that Jesus went to Hell just befuddled me. Wasn’t he sinless? He should have just gone straight to heaven after the resurrection right? Wrong.
This line is pretty much everything. It is at least partially why he had to die. Yes, he had to die to resurrect, and for us to see that OUR lives would carry on after we die. But, what about those who have died before Christ came? Who would be their savior. Would the faithful who lived before Christ just have to suffer eternally just because they had the great misfortune to have lived before the coming of the Messiah? Doesn’t seem fair.
Then I made the connection that for Christ to have defeated death it could mean not just him defeating his own death…and not just him defeating death for us. But he also defeated death for all those faithful and righteous that died from time beginning until Christ’s own death. He gave them a path to eternal life. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“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
634 “The gospel was preached even to the dead.”484 The descent into hell brings the Gospel message of salvation to complete fulfillment. This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption.’
Christ was the ultimate “road warrior” in a sense. In sports we are astounded when a team can go to another team’s town or stadium and give them a resounding defeat in front of the home town fans. Well Jesus went “on the road” in a sense when he entered the underworld and took the fight to Satan in his own back yard. His defeat of death was complete because he is able to reach back in time (Christ Yesterday) to pull the righteous souls back from the damned. He does that for us today (Christ Today) when we call on his name and remain faithful to him to the end. The endurance we spoke of last week. And he will be there for coming generations and for us in the final judgement (Christ Forever).
So, yes, Christ did go to hell after his death. But he continues to go to hell for us every time we fall. And as long as we continue to reach to him from the abyss of sin, we will in the end find ourselves, like Lazarus, in the bosom of Abraham when Jesus comes for us at last.
