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 Adam of the Paschal icon, are bound, held captive by the powers of sin, death and corruption. We too have “died” and have cast ourselves into a hell of our own making, far from the presence of the Giver of Life. Yet He comes to us as to lost sheep, descending in His compassionate love to seek us out in the darkness and to raise us up with Himself. Like Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven, He pursues us “down the nights and down the days . . . down the arches of the years,” that in the end He might summon us, “Rise, clasp My hand, and come!” Even if we make our bed in hell (Ps 138/139!), He is there, ever present, ever reaching out to lift us with Himself into the glory of resurrected life.
As the Scriptures so clearly attest, however, this life, this participation in the resurrection of our Lord, is not merely a future hope. It is, prophetically yet in truth, a present reality. Together with all of creation we sigh with longing, awaiting the revelation of the children of God. “Here indeed,” St Paul reminds us, “we groan and long to put on our heavenly dwelling.” Our true home, the fulfillment of our created existence, is in the heavens, beyond the pale of physical death. The true meaning of our life is only to be found in the transformation of this body of flesh into a body of spirit, through the full and perfect restoration within us of the image of God.
Yet this transformation begins in the here and now, in the present moment of our earthly life. For the victory of Christ is a victory over time, just as it is over sin and death. Dwelling within this earthly tent, struggling with the powers of darkness in the often tragic events of daily life, we can nevertheless walk here, today, in the eternal light of His glory. Reaching out to Him, often in lonely anguish, we find that He truly does wipe away every tear. And that experience allows us, even in the face of death—our own or that of a loved one—to live with a profound sense of hope. Through the Cross of Christ, death is no more, neither mourning nor sorrow, neither anguish nor pain. “For behold,” the voice from the heavenly throne declares, “the former things have passed away; all has been made anew” (Rev 21).
Those who make the lenten pilgrimage, through the dark of night and on to the radiant brightness of the Paschal dawn, pass by the Way of the Cross to arrive at the splendor of resurrected life. To them, fear of the future—anxiety in the face of death—is transfigured into joy. For they know what each of us in the depths of out soul longs to know: that by enduring the Cross for us, Christ has truly destroyed death by death.
~Father John Breck, God with Us: Critical Issues in Christian Life and Faith
