The path of descent involves letting go of our self-image, our titles, our public image. I think this is one of the many meanings of the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). What is at stake here is not just false images of God (which mostly serve our purposes), but also comfortable images of ourselves. That’s probably what the saints meant when they said we have to move to
This descent, this final and ultimate penetration into the realm of the dead, is accomplished once and for all. It frees patriarch, prophet, and king. But at the same time it frees us, liberating us from the consequences of death. The hand that reaches out to grasp the hands of Adam and Eve reaches out to embrace their descendants as well: every “Adam” who responds to His gesture with longing and with faith. We, like
By Father Thomas Hopko We Christians believe, Orthodox Christians believe, that Christ is that Messianic King who frees us, and He frees us by dying. He liberates us. He ransoms us by the power of hell. He gave Himself, a ransom, to death, by which we were held captive, in order to release us, and that is what trampling down death by death means. So the icon of the so-called Descent into Sheol shows that
By Father Thomas Hopko Even on the Russian Orthodox crosses, by the way, there is a little inscription at the foot of Jesus’ feet on the cross, in four Slavonic letters, M, L, R, and B, in Slavonic, which translated means, “The place of the skull (or Golgotha) has become Paradise.” So the bosom of Abraham had to be transformed into Paradise, into a living reality again, with interrelationship with all of creation—the sun, the
By Father Thomas Hopko So you have this kind of symbolical way of speaking about the condition of being dead. And so it can sound somehow like a place, like heaven would be a place, Sheol would be a place. But all the holy fathers, and many of the modern writers, for example Hierotheos Vlachos, the Metropolitan of Nafpaktos, a very famous, well-known writer of Orthodoxy, today many of his books are translated into English,
By Father Thomas Hopko The Paschal icon, the icon of the victory of Christ, God’s Messiah, over death, the last enemy, in the Orthodox Church is an icon of the live, glorious Christ, in the realm of the dead, smashing the gates of Sheol, or of Hades, and releasing, and freeing, and pulling from the tombs, the whole of humanity, symbolized in the persons of Adam and Eve. In that icon, of course, there are
By contrast, spirituality from above reacts to the rage that boils up in us by repressing or crushing it: “Rage is not supposed to happen. As a Christian I’ve got to be friendly and balanced at all times. So I have to control my rage.” Spirituality from below would mean questioning my rage, questioning what God wants to tell me with it. Perhaps my rage is pointing to some deep injury. Perhaps in my rage
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