We are now poised, as it were, between the death and resurrection of Christ in our liturgical celebrations. We have celebrated the passion, death, and burial of Christ over the past couple days, and we find ourselves now approaching his tomb with the holy women. The Gospel for the evening vigil is actually one of the resurrection Gospels (Mt 28:1-20), which gives a kind of brief summary of events beginning at the tomb and ending just before Jesus’ ascension. The liturgical texts for Vespers are on the verge of proclaiming the Resurrection, but that great outpouring of glory and joy begins at Matins. For now, the liturgy focuses on Jesus’ “descent into hell,” into the abode of the dead, to bring the good news of their redemption and to release all those imprisoned in the nether dungeons who were awaiting their Savior.
There’s a lot of talk of death and new life in the Epistle reading for this vigil Liturgy (Rom. 6:3-11), and that’s the first place we’ll try to understand and apply this mystery to our own lives. St Paul says that we were baptized into the death of Christ and thus buried with Him as well, in a mystical, sacramental sense. The Apostle often talks about dying with Christ, and here he makes more explicit what he means. Christ literally died and rose from the dead. Through baptism, faith and grace, we are spiritually united to this death and resurrection so that “we too might walk in newness of life.” Since we are not yet literally in the state of glorification that belongs to the resurrection, what is this newness of life?
According to the Apostle it is freedom from slavery to sin. He says that it is our old sinful self that was crucified in baptism. To die is to be free from sin, and to live a new life is to be in union with the risen Lord. Since we have been baptized into the death of Christ and have put our faith and trust in Him, the Apostle concludes: “you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Well, that’s quite an exalted state, even before the general resurrection on the last day. But St Paul insists that it is possible, that baptism provides the grace for this. We have the opportunity to reflect on the mystery of our baptism at Easter, which has been the traditional day for baptisms since the time of the early Church. And God has the opportunity to renew this grace within us, if we open our hearts to Him, professing our renewed resolve to be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
The mystery of our Lord’s descent into hell really is a mystery, because there are only a couple hints of it in Scripture. It is an article of the Apostles’ Creed, and so we can trust the ancient and unbroken tradition. We can also reflect on what it might mean for ourselves. There are two hints given in the First Epistle of St Peter. In one of them (3:18-19) he says that Christ was “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went to preach to the spirits in prison,” the context showing that they are among the dead. In the other (4:6), he says that the Gospel was preached to the dead, and this is usually taken as a reference to Jesus’ descent to the netherworld after He died.
I occasionally preach to the spirits in prison as well. Actually, I just correspond with a man in prison. The way he describes the environment there, it really is a sort of hell, so I try to encourage him to let Christ descend into that place and bring some light and peace. Since this man will probably spend the rest of his life there, I can only place before him the hope for the life to come, and for someone like him, that will really be a rescue from the abyss, and the mystery of Christ’s redemption will seem as dramatic as it was to those who first welcomed the Lord into the dreary abode of the netherworld.
I sometimes preach to the dead as well. There’s this memorable line in one of our Offices for the dead that we often pray during Lent: “Be of good courage, all ye dead!” Perhaps that’s what Jesus said as He broke down the gates of Hades: “Be of good courage, all ye dead, for your Savior has come to take you to the place of everlasting life!”
It’s not just a poetic or dramatic touch for the liturgy to envision the netherworld as a kind of prison, with bars and locks and gates. Perhaps this came from what St Peter said about the “spirits in prison,” but I think it also points to a reality of our inner lives. It is not only at the moment of our death that Christ comes to deliver us from hell or prison or whatever we want to call it. We can be in hellish prisons even as we walk the earth and go about our daily lives, though perhaps this is not obvious to others. But anyone who struggles with sinful habits, addictions, relentless temptations, or intolerable burdens, knows what it is like to be in a spiritual or psychological prison. It is also into these hells that the Redeemer descends, smashing the shackles and locks and bars. Our Deliverer isn’t such only at the very end of our lives, but all through our lives, and the mystery that we celebrate today calls our attention to it.
The proper icon for this feast shows Christ entering the netherworld, and there are broken doors and locks and chains lying all 
around as Christ rescues some representative figures from the Old Testament. But the two most conspicuous figures are Adam and Eve, who were the moldiest of all the dead, since they had been there the longest. But this detail is meant to teach us that no one is beyond the reach of Christ’s redemption. His hand is stretched out toward us, and all we have to do grab on to it and we too can be pulled out of our sticky or slimy hells. We can, as the Apostle said, walk in newness of life; we can be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. For Christ has come to preach to the spirits in prison, to tell them that their deliverance is at hand.
Let us now get a little sneak preview of the resurrection from the Gospel. Going down to the infernal regions was still part of the dirty work, so to speak, of Christ’s death, but having manifested his victory there, he rose from the tomb and entered the state of glory which will be his, bodily, for all eternity.
We’re pretty familiar with the details of the story: the women fearfully approaching the tomb—but with the determination born of love—the earthquake, the lightning-bright angel and the proclamation of the resurrection, which resounds through the ages and to the ends of the universe: “Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; he is risen, as he said.”
But since we do not wish to be mere bystanders or observers of the divine mysteries, we have to see what we can learn and apply to our lives when we read the Gospel stories. So to this end I’d like to focus on a few unlikely characters in this story: the guards at the tomb. They must have been rather hard-hearted fellows. They had felt the earthquake, seen the angel, fell to the ground in a paralyzing fear as the resurrection was announced. I would have hoped that they, like some characters in the Acts of the Apostles, would have either sought out the disciples of Jesus or simply entreated the holy women standing there: “What must I do to be saved?” For this was an extraordinary and undeniable manifestation directly from Heaven.
But what did they do? They reported it to their bosses, took a bribe, and then kept quiet about it. They should have been running about, saying, “It is true! He is risen! He is the Lord!” They remind me of those people at another tomb (that of Lazarus) who, after seeing with their own eyes an incredible miracle, hurried back to the chief priests and ratted on Jesus.
It seems to me that one must have a certain predisposition toward faith, a certain a priori openness to God if one is going to be able to accept divine revelation, whether in extraordinary or ordinary manifestations. Some people, I think, just don’t want to believe—perhaps because of the demands the truth might make on them, should they accept it—and they might even go to great lengths to keep themselves from being open to the possibility of faith. They remind me of one of Dostoyevsky’s characters, who was a hardened atheist, but who, when he died and found out there really was a God and a Heaven, was indignant and refused to go in, for the whole business was contrary to his principles.
I guess the shining angel at the tomb read the hearts of the guards and saw that they had closed themselves to the truth. So he didn’t even attempt to speak to them. The guards and the women were all right in the same place, but the Scripture says that the angel announced the resurrection to the women. They had faith; they had love. Even though they evidently weren’t expecting a resurrection, their hearts were open to God, so that when a message came from Heaven, they were already disposed to receive it and believe it. So they ran away with both fear and joy, bursting with good news to tell the Apostles. And who did they run into on the way? Well, it was the risen Lord Himself, who greeted them and allowed them to embrace Him! Faith and love will always be rewarded by God, but if we are hard of heart or closed to the voice of God, we will just be ignored and left to our own devices. Then we’ll take our bribes—whatever our favorite indulgence or self-medication might be—and we’ll keep quiet and try to convince ourselves that this whole business isn’t true after all.
But may we never be found in the position of “guarding the tomb,” that is, being an obstacle for others who are sincerely searching for Jesus. Whoever seeks Him will find Him, but whoever denies Him will just end up another spirit in prison. Let us, then, welcome the Lord who comes to save us and deliver us from the bonds of death and all that is death-dealing in this world. And let us, who have been baptized into his death, rise with Him to walk in newness of life. For by the grace of Christ and the power of his resurrection, we can be—now and forever—dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
