The descent into hell: Father Peter reflects...

We bring you a reflection by Monsignor Peter Fleetwood of the Liverpool Archdiocese, focusing on Easter Saturday by the title of 'Go to Hell' :

" Has anyone ever told you to go to hell? It's not a phrase I would like to hear addressed to me and I must admit I would hesitate before using it myself. I think everyone would hate to be told to go to hell but the odd thing is that most people in the western word say they don't believe in hell.

The obvious question is if you don't believe in it why would such a phrase annoy you? Well I suppose even people who don't believe in hell recognize that if hell existed it would be the worst place imaginable so they would be right to think the person wishing them there would be saying something powerfully negative and being agressive into the bargain.

Pope Benedict has asked Christians to think more about hell as an essential part of the picture our faith presents.

He did it during the season of Lent and I think there's a particular reason for doing it then. The only time apart from occasional phrases in gospel readings that hell is mentioned in Church is if we say the shorter version of the proclamation of faith, what we call the Apostle's Creed.

After Jesus was crucifed, dead and buried, Christians have continued with the words 'he descended into hell '. In other words after the Crucifixion ,death and burial of Jesus which we remember on Good Friday, the Apostle's Creed states that Jesus descended into hell before rising on Easter Sunday. That explains why Holy Saturday is such an empty day.

The day before Easter is the day when Jesus is totally absent from this world, the only day between His Conception and His Ascension into heaven.

This is not something invented by the later Church but refers to something unusual in the first Letter of Peter where it is written that through the Holy Spirit Jesus went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the Ark was being built.

The reason why Jesus made this journey to the spirits in prison is given later in the same Letter, God the Father is ready to judge the living and the dead.

For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh but live according to God in the Spirit.

The more modern version of the Apostle's Creed doesn't mention hell but says Jesus descended to the dead.

That doesn't mean hell has been abolished but simply that the new translation is closer to the first Letter of Peter. However the Greek and the Latin version of the Apostle's Creed both refer to the lowest places. Something like the nether regions or the underworld which are other ways the English language has for referring to hell.

I think this little forgotten part of our faith is very important and there's something touching and beautiful about it.

I had a discussion recently with some very devout Catholic ladies who wondered why Pope Benedict had asked us not to forget about hell.

One sister thought there is most certainly a hell but she just cannot believe that there is anybody there.

The other sister was extremely angry, she is not prepared to believe that hell is just a threat. She admitted that she doesn't know anyone personally who deserves to go to hell but she hopes the people who've committed certain kinds of crimes will be there sooner or later.

They asked me who was right, very embarassing... I agree with both of them in a way but in my mind were echoes of what we learned when we studied this in theology.

The Church teaches that there is a hell which involves real punishment for sin but the Church cannot say whether there's anyone there.

I told my two friends that and also told them that I've heard Orthodox Christians believe that the prayers of the Mother of God are so powerful that at the Last Judgement she will ask God to have mercy on all sinners and nobody will be damned for eternity.

What the Apostle's Creed and the first Letter of Peter tell us is that whatever human beings think of each other's actions, however much we would like to dump serious sinners God does not leave it there.

The gospel is preached to those who are dead so that they can live in the spirit. Who are these dead people to whom the gospel was preached?

They are the people who disobeyed long ago. I suppose they are people who knew what God expected of them but ignored that and stubbornly went their own way.

That cannot mean just the people from Noah's day but probably anyone who's ever really seriously disobeyed God.

What is important about the journey Jesus made to the underwold or to hell is that God for some reason wanted to give the people who were apparently condemned to be forgotten for eternity another chance. He wanted them to live and not to remain dead.

We have no clue whether the souls in prison listened to what Jesus had to say when he went to visit them but what the Apostle's Creed and the first Letter of Peter are really trying to say is that God is insistently merciful.

God keeps offering us a chance. As far as God is concerned we should never think that it is too late for change even after we die.

I think anyone who lets that sink in has to be ready to admit that there may be much more to God than we spontaneously realize. People who know they are sinners need not despair and those prepared to make a list of sinners should not be so presumptuous.

When I was learning my religion from a little catechism at school we were warned that two of the most serious sins in the book were despair and presumption.

And I think the message of Holy Saturday is meant to banish both of them. Nobody should feel beyond redemption and nobody should make them feel that way.

A Swiss theologian who wrote about Holy Saturday and the visit to the souls in prison in hell reckoned that this was God's attempt to rescue people who had condemned themselves by their sinful lives to eternal solitude.

Jesus took every sin ever committed with him into the realm of the dead and in that way every sin died with Him. He destroyed the power of death and of sin.

That does not mean nobody will ever die again and nobody will ever sin again. But that death which is the most terrifying thing for some people and sin which seems to dominate so much of our lives, cannot ultimately dominate our lives. Jesus visited the souls in prison for sin to offer them a way back to life."

A programme produced by Veronica Scarisbrick.

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