In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.
My beloved, we have made it thus far to one of the most beautiful evenings that the Church has to offer us. In this vigil of the night of Apocalypse on this Joyous Saturday, the Church celebrates her incarnate Lord who died in the flesh, who at this moment is down in Hades and He is granting victory to the kingdom of God. Imagine, if you will, that everyone prior to this moment, the righteous and the wicked, all went to the same destination. The righteous Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the prophets of old, Isaiah, Elijah, Elisha, Moses the archprophet, all of the great women of the past, Esther, Ruth, Deborah, all of them, regardless of how righteous and holy they lived, because there was no incarnation, because there was no victory over death, all of them went to Hades. And now the Lord enters into this darkest of places.
My beloved, I want to share with you a beautiful analogy that St. Augustine gives. He talks about death as this great beast, this monster. And this beast, what it does is that it roams in its realm and it is king there. And he speaks of Hades as a great ocean. And what he says is that every human soul ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, that when it died in the flesh, the soul would drop into this ocean. And what would happen is that this great beast, this creature called death, would come and swallow up the soul of any human being who died.
Now, my beloved, this would happen, according to St. Augustine, since the beginning of time ever since the fall. So every human soul, David the prophet and king, the righteous of the past, the great patriarchs, the holy men and women, all of them, all of them, without discrimination, fell into this great abyss and this great beast called death swallowed up their soul.
But then there came a time when a real human soul, the soul of the Incarnate Word of God, the God-man Himself, our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, after dying on the cross for our sakes and for our salvation, His soul also fell into this great abyss. And the beast did not distinguish this soul from any other soul, because, truly, He was human. And so, he came and he swallowed up this soul as well. And this is where the analogy of St. Augustine becomes so powerful, so beautiful.
At the moment that this beast swallowed up this soul thinking it was like any other soul that he had swallowed before, he quickly regretted it, because the beast now swallowed the very antidote to death. He swallowed the enemy that would conquer him. He swallowed the soul of Him who is life and when the beast took inside him Him who is life, death was conquered. Death was defeated.
My beloved, the Lord, just as last Sunday we celebrated His triumphant entry into Jerusalem, tonight, on Joyous Saturday, we celebrate His triumphant entry into Hades. He kicks down the doors of Hades and according to one of the beautiful rites of the Eastern Church, there's a hymn that says that He left Hades barren. It was once filled with the souls of the righteous, but now, the Lord has proclaimed salvation even in that darkest of places and He has taken all of those who are righteous with Him. He has left it barren.
My beloved, this is the faith of our Church. This is the joy of our Church that the Lord is capable of participating even in the worst of situations that humanity can experience. He is capable of participating even in our death, and in so doing, He comes to us in the pit that we have fallen into. He comes to us in the lowest of places and He proclaims salvation to us. He preaches the Gospel to us, and in so doing, He is capable of raising us from our death. He is capable of granting us the life that we could not achieve on our own, truly eternal life, truly this life that was supposed to be given to us ever since the creation of humanity in the image and likeness of God.
Truly, it is Joyous Saturday, because tomorrow, my beloved, on the evening, where we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord, we will understand what it means that the Lord has died for our sakes, has entered into Hades and has raised us up again with Him. On this day, I urge you, as we remember what the Lord has done for us, as we recognize that He has come into our brokenness, He has entered into our pit which we may have dug even for ourselves, we recognize that He has shone a light in the darkness.
He has become the source of what enlightens the brokenness of humanity. He is the source of healing to those who, like me, are severely ill, suffering from great spiritual illness, a death that has overtaken me in the form of the passions that rule over me, in the form of my addictions, in the form of my brokenness. He shines His light in the darkness that has overtaken me and He carries me out of it. He raises me from my death.
My beloved, I wish all of you a most blessed Joyous Saturday and I urge you: let your prayer be that of those who dwelt in Hades for the longest of times, waiting for the coming of the Saviour, waiting for the incarnate Lord to come and rescue them from the death of Hades. Let our prayer be: Lord, please, come and raise me from my own death.
To our God be all glory now and forever and unto the ages of all ages. Amen.