"Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light"
By Fr. John Roderick, F.S.C.B.
April, 2024
In my junior year of undergrad, I had an elective course titled Introduction to Catholicism, and part of the curriculum was the reading of a selection of great works by St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Dante Alighieri, and Flannery O’Connor. The final writing assignment for the course was to write a paper on one of the articles of faith. After reading Dante’s Inferno, I was mesmerized by the details and description of the various circles of hell and decided to write about Jesus’ mysterious journey to the netherworld.
Ever since then, I have loved reflecting on the mystery of Holy Saturday. I have discovered a few beautiful homilies, writings, and artistic depictions that have helped me deepen my understanding of this important day of the Easter Triduum. On Good Friday, we are invited to accompany Jesus as He carries the cross to Calvary to be crucified—and the following day, on Holy Saturday—to live a day of silence and mourning for the death of God. It is a day full of the expectation for the triumphant liturgy of the Easter Vigil which Bishop Massimo so beautifully described in last week's bulletin. This week, I would like to share a few reflections that caught my attention this year.
What happened on Holy Saturday? The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that Jesus sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection: Jesus, like all men, experienced death, and His soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. Jesus went there as Savior to proclaim the Good News of salvation to all the spirits imprisoned (#632). All those people who had died prior to the death of Jesus were waiting in the netherworld, called Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek, for their redeemer. Jesus went to preach the gospel to the dead (#634). The Catechism teaches that Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to deliver the just who had gone before him (#633).
In the Eastern Church, there are many beautiful icons of this event that depict the shattered bolts of this world and the door of death being torn from its hinges. These icons show that Jesus is the Victor who burst through the impregnable forces of death, and that death is no longer a place of no return; its doors lie open (Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One).
What is Hell? The Catechism teaches that hell is the state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed (#1033). Hell is for those people who freely choose to reject Christ’s offer of mercy and forgiveness and choose to be separated from him forever. They die in a state of mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love. Ratzinger described hell as a type of loneliness that could not be pierced by another person, an isolation so deep that it could no longer be reached, a state which the word of love no longer penetrates. God created man, men and women, for a relationship of familiarity, love, and communion with Him, with one another, and with all of creation. Hell is the complete and total breakdown of these relationships.
“Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” In an ancient Easter homily ascribed to Epiphanius, we hear an imagined dialogue between Jesus and Adam. Jesus proclaims to Adam:
“I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated” (Office of Readings for Holy Saturday).
Jesus goes to the realm of the dead to proclaim the great message of salvation, of His victory over sin, death and darkness, to Adam and all his descendants. Jesus will go and take Adam by the hand and say to him: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
A day of silence. On Holy Saturday, the Church invites all of her followers to live a day of silence and mourning for the death of Jesus. The reading from the Divine Office offers this beautiful image: “Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps 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.” Our Savior and King, Jesus Christ, lay asleep in the tomb where he was buried, but it is not an inactive sleep: “Jesus has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep.” Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is always actively, and often silently, seeking out the lost, distracted, suffering, and wounded sheep, calling them by name to return and experience the joy of belonging to the sheepfold.
What happened to death itself? The Catechism teaches that death made its entrance into human history because of man’s first sin (#400). Death can be described as a state of separation from God, a breakdown in the familiarity and communion with God and with our neighbor. Jesus came into the world to fulfill Isaiah’s prophetic promise: “On this mountain, he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations. He will destroy death forever” (25:7-8). Ratzinger explains that death was no longer the same after Christ experienced it:
Before, death was just death, separation from the land of the living and, albeit at differing degrees of profundity, something like “hell,” the nocturnal side of living, impenetrable darkness. But now death is also life, and when we pass over the glacial solitude of the threshold of death, we always meet once more with him who is life, whose desire is to become the companion of our ultimate solitude and who, in the mortal solitude of his anguish on the Mount of Olives and of his cry on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” became a partaker of our solitudes.
On Holy Saturday, Jesus penetrated the extreme separation from God to radically change and defeat it forever. St. Paul beautifully described this mystery: “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55). Throughout the Easter season, we hear in the First Easter Preface: “For he is the true Lamb who has taken away the sins of the world; by dying, he has destroyed our death, and by rising, restored our life” (Roman Missal).
Christ’s victory over death is also symbolized in the opening procession of the Easter Vigil. This solemn procession is paradigmatic of the whole of Christian life, and especially of Christ’s descent to hell on Holy Saturday. Christ descended into hell to everyone who had been waiting in darkness and silence to announce the victory of light over death and darkness. The singing and light, which represent Christ, break the impenetrable silence and darkness of death. All of God’s people are invited to receive the light of Christ and join the joyful praise of this night.
“Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.” (John 20:22-23). During Lent, and especially during Holy Week, I had the opportunity to experience the beauty of the sacrament of Confession. I must confess there were times when I felt a little overwhelmed by the number of penitents who desired to have their confessions heard. While administering the sacrament, I could see firsthand God’s desire to penetrate the darkness caused by the sin of each of His beloved sons and daughters and to offer them the possibility to experience His victory of light. In every confession, Jesus descends to the realm of death and offers His mercy just like He did to Adam on Holy Saturday. Many people returned to the sacrament after having been away for decades.
During this Easter season which continues to Pentecost, I would like to invite you to open your whole lives to the victory of the Resurrected Christ. He is waiting and calling to each of us personally: Awake, O sleeper. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.
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Image featured in the banner: Blessed Fra Angelico, Descent into Underworld, (detail) from the Armadio degli Argenti Painting Series, tempera on wood panel, ca. 1450, Museo di San Marco, Florence, Italy; USPD
