Every week at Mass, Catholics recite the Creed. We proclaim our faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the establishment of Christ’s Church. During Lent, we are called to meditate more intensely on the sections of the Passion, Death, and coming Resurrection of our Lord:
- “[Jesus Christ] suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell; the third day he rose again from the dead.”
Maundy Thursday, or Holy Thursday, marks the beginning of the Lenten Triduum. It is three days of intense prayer and meditation; three days in which we spiritually suffer and die with Christ. On Holy Thursday we witness the institution of the Eucharist and end the Mass with thoughts of the agony in the garden. Good Friday is marked by a service commemorating the Passion of Jesus Christ. And on Holy Saturday we find the tomb empty; the Son has left and man is alone.
When Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was a theology professor, he taught a course called Introduction to Christianity. The notes from the course were published into a book by the same name. In it, Cardinal Ratzinger devotes a section to the agony of the Passion and what it means that Christ died and descended into Hell.
Nietzsche is famous for the statement “God is dead….and we killed him.” This statement rings especially true for Christians (Ratzinger, 294). God the Son did die and we did kill him. Thursday night beginning with the agony, into his death on Friday and absence on Saturday we are constantly reminded of this fact. We are haunted by the thoughts of what we have done and long for the presence of the Son. And yet he is not there. For three days we await his return, for he has descended into Hell and we cannot follow him.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines Hell as the “state of self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (1033). Hell is complete separation from God (CCC, 1035). Christ’s descent into what we call Hell was what the Jews referred to as Sheol – known as Hades to the Greeks. It was a state of being to which all souls went and those worthy of Heaven awaited Christ (CCC, 633).
Good Friday marks both the death of Jesus Christ as well as his descent into Hell. In his death, the disciples experienced the murder of their hope; the One sent by God died on a Cross and is no more (Ratzinger, 295). It is at this time that God becomes inaccessible to us; when the Son has departed and man is left in silent loneliness.
Ernst Käsemann, a Lutheran Theologian, notes that Jesus’ final words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is really a cry from the depths of Hell. It is the forsaken begging for God’s love and presence only to be completely alone; Christ did not cry out in physical pain on the Cross, he cried out in the complete and utter pain of loneliness and abandonment (Ratzinger, 297-298). In his death, Christ shares in the suffering of those in Sheol and we have a glimpse of our own solitude to remain until the Resurrection.
Ratzinger illustrates that our loneliness is like the fear of a child alone in the woods. Despite our social nature, we are isolated within ourselves – for no one but God knows us completely – and we need the presence of a “You” to find comfort and peace (298-299); the presence of God. Yet in his death, Christ leaves us with no “You” to cling to. Ratzinger says that
- If there were such a thing as a loneliness that could no longer be penetrated and transformed by the word of another; if a state of abandonment were to arise that was so deep that no “You” could reach into it any more, then we should have real, total loneliness and dreadfulness, what theology calls “hell” (300).
Christ’s descent into Hell is a loneliness that love cannot penetrate. In his absence, we are left with the empty tomb, the open tabernacle. We are left calling for God and the response is silence.
Good Friday marks the beginning of this silence, which continues through Holy Saturday. Ratzinger says that in Christ’s Passion “he went into the abyss of our abandonment” (301) and the Son, in his love, entered Sheol, where love had never been present. His death on the Cross demonstrates that we are alone in our deaths; no one may accompany us through that door, not even God. We must face the loneliness and fear completely alone. But death is conquered in the presence of love on the other side of the threshold, gathering up the holy to remain eternally with God. Christ opened the “gates of Sheol” (301) in his descent; the tomb is empty, but love has not completely abandoned us.
