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That Jesus descended into hell is a matter of Catholic dogma — we profess our belief in it every time we say the Apostles’ Creed, and the Church’s liturgy turns to it every Holy Saturday.
We repeat it because it is more than just a side detail of the Passion story — it describes a reality in our lives today.
God uses signs in the visible world to show us what is happening in the unseen world.
Thus, when Jesus was born, a star appeared — and on Good Friday, when he died, the opposite happened: An apparent eclipse darkened the day so that the world’s loss would be clear.
But the Gospels also say that an earthquake shook the Temple, tearing the curtain that veiled the Holy of Holies from the sinners who weren’t allowed to approach it — which suggests the spiritual reality of the Gates of Eden being broken open to allow us back in.
Jesus describes hell in a physical way, also, as a “lake of fire.” We picture a lonely, dark, painful place deep in the earth. But this is a powerful description of a reality that isn’t geographical. The chief suffering of hell is eternal separation from God, which is lonely, dark, and painful like a pit in the earth — and is also something that happens before death.
“To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him forever by our own free choice,” says the Catechism. “This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell.’”
The problem is, before the death and resurrection of Christ, before the Gates of Eden were reopened, there were some faithful people who repented and accepted the coming Messiah.
Simply put, Jesus came to get them first.
The Catechism explains it this way:
The Catechism quotes an ancient Christian homily for Holy Saturday to describe that:
“Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. … [and he says] ‘I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.’”
Psalm 40 could be about Adam and Eve and all the others waiting for their redemption. It says:
“I waited, I waited for the LORD, and he stooped down to me; he heard my cry. He drew me from the deadly pit, from the miry clay.”
But what about us?
The Catechism adds that Jesus in his descent saves “all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.”
I like to think that includes us. When we are in the sins that entrap us on earth, and threaten to keep us forever, Jesus descends into our hell, also.
In my Extraordinary Story podcast, I describe how, for me, the story of the death of Thomas Vander Woude is the perfect image of what Our Lord does for us. When the Virginian father of seven saw his 19-year-old son with Down syndrome fall into a septic tank, he got a neighbor to help and then jumped in, went under the sewage and hoisted him out on his back before succumbing to the fumes and dying in his place.
Our Lord sees us drowning in sewage — trapped in the hell of our sins — and hoists us out, too. And if Psalm 40 could describe the Old Testament saints awaiting their savior, Psalm 69 could describe us. It says:
“Save me, O God, for the waters
have risen to my neck.
I have sunk into the mud of the deep,
where there is no foothold.”
That’s where we are when Jesus appears beside us to help us.
He hoists us on his wounded shoulders up to where the Church is reaching out with the sacraments, especially Confession, and grips our hand to pull us out of our personal hell into the freedom and freshness and light of his mercy.
“I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell,” he tells us. “Arise, and let us go hence.”
