HE DESCENDED INTO HELL,
THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE
AGAIN FROM THE DEAD

"The Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day" (St. Matt. 17, 22-23).

At the moment of Our Lord’s death His soul descended into that part of hell called otherwise known as the Limbo of the Patriarchs or Abraham's Bosom - the place where the souls of the Just who died before Christ were detained: "For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth" (St. Matt. 12, 40). Christ announced the glad tidings of Redemption to them, and their approaching admission into heaven with Him on Ascension Day: "he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison" (1 Pet. 3, 19). Our Lord’s very presence transformed Limbo into a delightful paradise, as we gather from His words to the Good Thief: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (St. Luke 23, 43).

It is also an expressed opinion that Christ visited purgatory, to console and comfort the souls suffering there: "I will penetrate to all the lower parts of the earth, and will behold all that sleep, and will enlighten all that hope in the Lord" (Sir. 24, 45).

For three days Christ’s soul was separated from His body, yet His divinity was never for a moment separated from either. On the third day, Christ, by His own divine power, reunited His soul to His body and rose again immortal and impassable: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (St. John 2, 19); "I lay down my life in order to take it up again" (St. John 10, 17).

After His Resurrection, Christ retained in His body the marks of His sufferings: "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe" (St. John 20, 27). These marks will ever remain to show that He rose again in the same body, and as tokens of His victory over sin and death.

Moreover, having risen with the same but glorified body Christ is no longer subject to death, as were those He miraculously raised to life. Further, He is the principle and cause of the future General Resurrection of all the dead: "for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ" (1 Cor. 15, 22).

On the fact of the Resurrection rests our belief in Christianity: "and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain..." (1 Cor. 15, 14). There are ten accounts given in Sacred Scripture of Christ's appearances after His Resurrection:

(i) To St. Mary Magdalen near the Sepulcher while she was looking for Christ's body (St. John 20, 16);

(ii) To the holy women returning from the Sepulcher after being shown the empty tomb by the angel (St. Matt. 28, 9);

(iii) To Simon Peter alone as Head of the Apostles (St. Luke 24, 34);

(iv) To the two disciples on the road to Emmaus to whom Christ expounded all the Scriptures concerning himself from Moses and the Prophets (St. Luke 24, 25);

(v) To the Apostles assembled behind locked doors, excepting St. Thomas, on the first Easter Sunday (St. John 20, 21);

(vi) A week later to all of the Apostles behind the same locked doors, including St. Thomas (St. John 20, 28);

(vii) To St. Peter and six other Apostles while fishing fruitlessly upon the Sea of Galilee (St. John 21, 7);

(viii) To the eleven Apostles in Galilee upon a mountain where Jesus had bidden them meet him (St. Matt. 28, 16);

(ix) To St. James the Less as recounted by St. Paul (1 Cor. 15, 7);

(x) On the day of His Ascension from Mount Olivet in front of as many as five hundred people (Acts 1, 9).

The Apostles were to go on and preach Christ’s Resurrection before the very Jewish leaders who put Him to death. They preached this truth to an incredulous world, filled with the unction of the Holy Spirit, braving persecution, imprisonment and death: "And we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus" (Acts 13, 32-33).

The Fathers:

St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5, 31, 2 (C. 180 AD):

"For since the Lord went away into the midst of the shadow of death where the souls of the dead were, and afterwards arose in the body, and after the resurrection was taken up, it is clear that the souls also of His disciples, on account of which the Lord underwent these things, will go away into the place allotted them by God."

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 4, 11 (C. 350 AD):

"(Christ) descended into the subterranean regions so that He might ransom from there the just...David was there, and Samuel, and all the Prophets; and John, the same who, through his messengers, said: ‘Are You the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’ Would you not want Him to go down to free such men as these?"

St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism 1 (Post 383 AD):

"God (the Son) did not impede death from separating His soul from His body according to the necessary order of nature, but has reunited them to one another in the resurrection, so that He Himself might be, in His person, the meeting point for death and life, by arresting in Himself the decomposition of nature produced by death and so becoming the source of reunion for the separated parts."

St. Augustine of Hippo (+430 AD), Commentary on Psalm 120 4:

"It is no great thing to believe that Christ died. This the pagans, Jews, and all the wicked believe; in a word, all believe that Christ died. But that He rose from the dead is the belief of Christians. To believe that He rose again, this we deem of great moment."

Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566):

Finally, the Resurrection of our Lord, as the pastor should inculcate, was necessary to complete the mystery of our salvation and redemption. By His death Christ liberated us from sin; by His Resurrection, He restored to us the most important of those privileges which we had forfeited by sin. Hence these words of the Apostle: He was delivered up for our sins, and rose again for our justification. That nothing, therefore, may be wanting to the work of our salvation, it was necessary that as He died, He should also rise again.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992):

No. 632: The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was "raised from the dead" presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection. This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ’s descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there.

No. 639: The mystery of Christ’s resurrection is a real event, with manifestations that were historically verified, as the New Testament bears witness. In about AD 56, St. Paul could already write to the Corinthians: "I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve..." The Apostle speaks here of the living tradition of the Resurrection which he had learned after his conversion at the gates of Damascus.

No. 655: Finally, Christ’s Resurrection - and the risen Christ himself - is the principle and source of our future resurrection: "Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep...For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive..."

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HE DESCENDED INTO HELL,THE THIRD DAY HE ROSEAGAIN FROM THE DEAD

HE DESCENDED INTO HELL,
THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE
AGAIN FROM THE DEAD