Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may perpetual
light sine upon them. May their souls,
and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in
peace.
In our last post, we discussed the suffering and death of Jesus. In today’s post, we will discuss the burial and descent into hell that followed his death. These mysteries are relived every year on Holy Saturday, when there are no Sacraments celebrated, except in extreme emergencies. It is a day of silence.
Jesus did not just die for our sins, but he also experienced
what it was like to be dead. We
read in #624: In his plan of salvation, God ordained that his Son should not only
"die for our sins" but should also "taste
death", experience the condition of death, the separation of his soul from
his body, between the time he expired on the cross and the time he was raised
from the dead.
Jesus’ human soul and human body were separated while he was buried, but remained together in one person. We read
in #626: Since the "Author of
life" who was killed is the same "living one [who has]
risen", the divine person of the Son of God necessarily
continued to possess his human soul and body, separated from each other by
death: By the fact that at Christ's
death his soul was separated from his flesh, his one person is not itself
divided into two persons; for the human body and soul of Christ have existed in
the same way from the beginning of his earthly existence, in the divine person
of the Word; and in death, although separated from each other, both remained
with one and the same person of the Word.
Because Jesus is a divine person,
and is united by his divinity, not his humanity (even though he is both), both
the soul and the body, even though they were apart, could still be
considered together in his divine person. Furthermore, because his soul and body were still alive in his divine person, even
in death, Jesus’ body saw “no corruption”, his corpse did not decay.
At our Baptism, we, too, are buried with Christ. Therefore we have been buried with him by
baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 4:26)
However, our Lord was not inactive while he was hidden for
the time between his death and resurrection.
Before he rose from the dead, he descended
into hell.
There are a few key points here.
1)
The abode of the dead, or hell, is where souls
go who are separated from God. Before
the Resurrection, there were some who there who were righteous, but
could not enter into heaven due to Original Sin, and their own personal sin. In fact, no one could enter heaven until the power of sin was destroyed by Christ. Christ went to the realm of the dead to free
those just souls who lived before him and merited heaven, but could not enter. Jesus did not go to destroy this realm of the dead; it still must exist for those who
freely choose to reject God. (All those who are there now are there by their own free choice.) He went
simply to remove just souls from it so they could experience the fruits of the
redemptive work of Christ. This leads to
the next point.
2)
With this event, the Gospel has now been
preached to all people, the living and the dead. The Church
proclaims the Gospel now to all the living, and anyone who died after Christ
has heard the Gospel in this way. Before Christ and his Church, however, no one had heard it while in this world. Therefore, this descent to
the dead was necessary to achieve that end.
So now that he has been buried, and has released the just souls from the realm of the dead, Our Lord is ready to rise. We will look at the wonderful event of the Resurrection in the next post.
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