From the Depths of Hell

TOPICAL INDEX

• Conciliarity
• Confession
• Eucharist
• Evangelism
• Fasting
• Forgiveness
• Giving
• Hell
• Holy Friday
• Holy Saturday
• OCA
• Pascha
• Practices
• Prayer
• Resurrection
• Salvation
• Sin
• Standing
• The Cross
• The Theotokos
• Worship

Very Rev. John Breck

The final Old Testament reading for Holy Saturday vespers -- Daniel 3:1-57, the story of the three young men in the fiery furnace in Babylon -- is composite, drawing upon both Aramaic and Greek (Septuagint) traditions. The latter modifies and amplifies a detail the Church's patristic witnesses consider essential. That small detail is a typological image that announces the primary theme of Orthodox Pascha or Easter: the descent of Christ into the depths of hell, to liberate humanity from the powers of sin, death and corruption.

According to the Aramaic version, King Nebuchadnezzar -- for unspecified reasons (the Greek declares it was because he heard the three young men singing from the midst of the flames) -- asks his advisors, "Did we not cast three bound men into the furnace?" Then he adds, "Yet I see four men, unbound, walking in the midst of the fire -- and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods!" That descriptive phrase, "like a son of the gods," is a Semitism, signifying an angelic being. The Septuagint replaces it with the assertion, "An angel of the Lord came down into the furnace… and drove out the fiery flame."

In the view of the Church Fathers and Orthodox tradition generally, the angelic being who appears in the midst of the flames is a prophetic image of both the means and the meaning of our salvation. That powerful image points forward to and is fulfilled by the crucifixion, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

One of the most significant differences between Western (Latin) and Eastern (Orthodox) theology concerns the means by which we are redeemed from the consequences of sin -- our rebellion against the person and will of God -- and granted access to the blessed, transfigured existence termed by Scripture "eternal life." The Latin view -- focusing on the "original sin" of the first man Adam, transmitted to successive generations like a genetic flaw -- stresses the payment or obligation we have to offer to God, whether of Christ's sacrifice (Anselm's theory of "satisfaction") or of our good deeds (the notion of accumulated "merits"). These medieval themes have been significantly modified by modern Western theologians, but they continue to shape Catholic popular piety, and even that of certain Protestant confessions (the Lutheran "theologia crucis," for example: a "theology of the cross" that places primary emphasis on Christ's crucifixion, while not neglecting the resurrection). An indirect consequence of this accent is the paschal image of the risen Christ in Western tradition. There the Saviour, bearing the marks of crucifixion, is usually depicted rising victorious from his tomb or sepulchre, while the guards are asleep at his feet.

In Orthodox tradition, that saving victory over death is depicted much differently. Here the themes of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and exaltation merge in the motif of Christ's "Descent into Hell," more properly termed his "Descent into Sheol," the realm of the departed righteous who await the Saviour's coming.

If the eternal Son of God, second Person of the Holy Trinity, deigned to become a man, a human being of flesh and blood, it was not in the first instance to assume the consequences of Adam's guilt through a vicarious sacrificial self-offering. He "took flesh," rather, to assume our fallen, sin-scarred "nature" -- what makes us essentially human -- in order to redeem and glorify that nature. This he accomplished by his sinless life and innocent death, fulfilled by his rising from the dead and his ascension or exaltation into heaven, the fullness of the presence of God. In that movement of glorification, he remained the "God-man," bearing in himself both his eternal divinity and his human nature, restored and renewed to its original perfection and beauty. If the Son of God became (a) man, patristic tradition declares, it was to offer to us the possibility of theôsis or "deification," meaning a full participation in God's very life and a sharing with him in a communion of boundless, inexhaustible love.

In this perspective, it is not we who strive to reconcile ourselves to God by appeasing his righteous wrath. It is God who seeks to reconcile himself us to through the gift of his Son, the righteous innocent one, who breaks down the wall of our sin and unrighteousness, in order to unite us through himself to the Father. "God was in Christ," the apostle Paul declares, "reconciling the world to himself."

This is the theme so beautifully and poignantly depicted in iconography of the Resurrection or Descent into Sheol. The Crucified One, lying in the tomb on the day that will become known and celebrated as Holy Saturday, "descends" into the lower reaches of the created world, into the realm of the dead. Here he reaches out to meet and seize the outstretched hands of Adam and Eve, representatives of all humanity. The flow of Christ's robes and the position of his body make it appear that he is both descending and ascending. Enveloped in a resplendent aureole, he stands victoriously above the pit of hell, a dark hole in which Satan and Hades, symbols of sin and death, are bound fast. Death is overcome, and for those who long for eternal communion with God, salvation is at hand. It is enough to reach out and seize the hand that's offered.

As the angel descended into the fiery furnace to protect and save the three young men, so Christ descends into the farthest reaches of hell, to bring reconciliation and life to all those who seek them. In the same way, he descends into our own realm of torment and death, to enfold us in the mantle of his boundless compassion and love. We may provoke our own alienation from ultimate truth and value. We may reject the gift of life and fashion our own hell, a place of living death. Or that hell may take the form of unrelieved suffering, within ourselves or in the lives of those closest to us. Still, the metaphor holds. Into that place of darkness and pain, even into the fiery furnace of our tortured imagination, Christ descends again and again. He comes not only to release us from our suffering; he comes to bear that suffering with us and for us. He comes as Light into our darkness and as Life into our sickness and death. He comes, as he came to the three young men and to the righteous departed of the paschal icon, with outstretched hands, to embrace us, to raise us up, and to exalt us with himself into a place, into a communion, of ineffable glory and joy.

This sacred image of Christ's paschal victory reveals the mystery, the sacramental blessing, of our salvation. And in that mystery lies our most fervent hope, and with it, the object of our deepest longing.

Confession: Hospital or Courtroom?

TOPICAL INDEX

• Conciliarity
• Confession
• Eucharist
• Evangelism
• Fasting
• Forgiveness
• Giving
• Hell
• Holy Friday
• Holy Saturday
• OCA
• Pascha
• Practices
• Prayer
• Resurrection
• Salvation
• Sin
• Standing
• The Cross
• The Theotokos
• Worship

Fr. Christopher Foley

November 2006

“Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”

James 5:16

“Receive the Holy Spirit! If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

John 20:22-23

Much has been said about the need for confession of sins in the Church and the need to be reconciled to God. There is a tendency to think of confession in some type of legalistic way - where one recounts their trespasses and gets the due punishment and forgiveness and goes on their way. There has also been a tendency to see confession as a type of yearly obligation in order to have a "pass" to come to communion. Unfortunately, these views of confession have done great damage to this "sacrament of reconciliation." So, what is confession exactly? Is it a legal transaction that takes place in a "courtroom?" For the Orthodox Church, confession has always been understood more in terms of hospital language, rather than a courtroom.

Sin as Sickness

It is important, first of all, to remember that sin is not the breaking of a moral code of conduct. Sin means literally, to "miss the mark," like an arrow that is shot and misses its intended target. The target here is man being what he was intended to be - created in the image and likeness of God. When we sin, we cease to be fully what God intended for us to be. It is we who break communion with God through our sin. We all sin and "fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). There is a story from the desert fathers about a disciple who came to a certain elder one day and said, "Father, I have fallen!" The elder said to him, "Get up!" Again and again he came to the elder and said, "I have fallen!" And invariably the elder responded, "Get up!" The disciple then asked, "When will I have to stop getting up?" "Not until the day you give your soul up to God," the elder replied. Thus it is not a matter of if we sin, but when we sin, what are we going to do about it? In the First Epistle of St. John we read, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." So the first step in confession is the acknowledgment of our sins. In hospital language, sin is a parasitic sickness or wound that needs to be cleaned out. Before it can be healed, one must acknowledge that there is a wound in the first place. Christ, as the Divine Physician, came to heal the sick. Christ Himself said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick ... For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

Confession as Surgery

Confession is primarily naming and taking responsibility of the illness in order for the spiritual hospital (the Church) to prescribe a remedy to aid in the healing process. This is just one of many metaphors that the Fathers of the Church have used to speak of confession and reconciliation. In the charge that the priest says prior to the confession of sins we find a strong injunction about not hiding anything, "lest you depart from the Physician unhealed." Confession of sins is the rooting out of the infected wound. It is surgery that prepares the wound for the healing balm of penance and Holy Communion. This medicine of the Church comes from the same root as pharmacy (pharmakon). This medicine is given so that healing would continue to take place within the wound and not become infected again. This is how a penance is understood. It is not a punishment or an earning of forgiveness, but a prescription from the doctor for the sake of healing and restoration. Fr. John Romanides, a well-known 20th century Orthodox theologian says, "Having faith in Christ without undergoing healing in Christ is not faith at all. Here is the same contradiction that we find when a sick person who has great confidence in his doctor never carries out the treatment which he recommends."

Recovery

It is impossible to be saved on our own. It is only when we are able to admit our complete powerlessness over sin that we can be open to Christ's healing in our lives. We need the Church in order to root out this sickness. Think of how silly it would be for a surgeon to operate on himself. A Father of the Church has said, "he who sees his owns sins is a greater miracle than raising the dead." This means that it is a miracle when we are truly willing to see ourself as we really are, to see the infection, and be willing to submit to the "knife" of the Church for the sake of true healing and restoration. Fr. Alexander Schmemann said, "It is when man is challenged with the real 'contents' of the Gospel, with its divine depth and wisdom, beauty and all-embracing meaning, that he becomes 'capable of repentance,' for the true repentance is precisely the discovery by man of the abyss that separates him from God and from his real offer to man. It is when the man sees the bridal chamber adorned that he realizes he has no wedding garment for entering it." This recalls the story from Matthew 25 about the virgins who had prepared their lamps with oil for the meeting of the bridegroom and how he came at midnight to claim those who were prepared. The bridegroom is Christ and the bridal chamber is the Kingdom of Heaven. This is what we sing during Holy Week on the first three days at Bridegroom Matins, "Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, but I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul, and save me." Let us be ever open to a vision of Christ who desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of Thy Truth. He has given us His Holy Church as a place for recovery - that intensive care unit for our sinful souls where we are given medicine to aid us in our healing.

Note: See also "Preparation for Holy Communion" by Fr. Thomas Hopko, an article from Orthodox Education Day Book October 7, 2000