What "Hell" Did Jesus Descend To? - Ask a Marian

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to this week's edition of ask american i'm father alan alexander and this week's question comes from donna head from tracy california and she asks the apostle creed says he descended into hell what happened to jesus and what did jesus do while he was in hell is this the hell of the damn because i thought hell was eternal thank you to the marians for all you do to teach us the fate and thank you donna for all you do to pray and support us our work would not be possible without the prayers and support of so many of our marian helpers what a great question again this is a question that i've pondered myself through my studies in seminary in my personal reading and especially reflecting on the church fathers and others there are multiple ways of understanding christ's descent into hell what is it that we believe well the creed says that he descended into hell so we have to believe that but the exact specifics of it we don't always parse out some understand jesus christ to send him to hell to be only the hell of the just what is the hell of the just well before jesus came there are those who are waiting their entrance into heaven they had to be in what we might call purgatory or what scripture refers to is the bosom of abraham that place of dwelling were the souls who died in a sort of friendship with god but not united with him yet in the grace of christ because christ had not come and redeemed the world and yet they were waiting they knew or had some knowledge of their eventual redemption in christ jesus christ attests that abraham saw his day and rejoiced we see icons of jesus's descent into hell bringing out souls like adam and eve we cannot understand these souls to be in the hell of the damned if they enter into eternal life in heaven and so we made this distinction between the hell of the just and the hell of the damned the word hell itself in the latin edition of the creed inferno right in the depths it can also mean the fiery place when young students often ask me about this question i i remind them or i ask them if they've learned about the study of the earth and how the deeper we go into the earth the hotter it gets the core of the earth being extremely hot and so the depths and heat are united naturally and in our understanding and articulation of the faith and god's revelation to us these two are also tied hell is like heaven in the sense that it is a state rather than a place but in some way can be called a place because in eternity our bodies will be there when jesus christ descended into hell we know that he entered somehow into the realm of the dead into the depths to those souls who are awaiting redemption but there are fathers of the church and theologians and saints who believe that he also descended into the hell of the damned in some way not to redeem them but in a sense to run a victory lap if you will when we see christ in the images of the resurrection he is often holding a staff with a flag a white flag and a cross on it this is like the victory flag that athletes might carry as they ran a lap after they had won a race christ could have descended into the hell of the damned again not in any way that would unite them to his grace but rather in a sense to solidify their punishment especially that of the demons to say to satan ha ha nah nah i win not out of spite not off a wretchedness because god still loves even the demons in hell but in the sense that he would know now that he has been conquered and that christ came to snatch out of his grips those he thought he had before the coming of christ i can only imagine that the devil thought that those who were in the hell of the just were in the hell of the damned but we know now that they weren't that they were awaiting christ's resurrection and he took them into heaven this is what it means again whether or not he ascended into the hell of the damned what it looked like and what he specifically did there we're not the church doesn't teach definitively but the church does teach that christ descended into the depths into the place of suffering where those souls were awaiting their redemption were those souls who had died before christ yet died in friendship of god who now by the victory of his cross could be united to his grace and enter into the gates of heaven with him let us pray that weed like them may be united to christ in his victory over sin over death and even over hell

Channel: Divine Mercy

Views: 43,002

Keywords: Hell, Jesus, Hades, descended into hell, what do Catholics believe, Catholic teaching, Ask a Marian, Fr. Allen Alexander

Id: 3lEZq9a1ZpE

Length: 6min 15sec (375 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022