At the General Audience, Pope Leo XIV reflects on Jesus’ descent into the underworld on Holy Saturday to bring light to the darkness of human existence.
By Christopher Wells
Jesus’ descent into the “underworld” on Holy Saturday – after His Crucifixion and before the Resurrection – “is the most profound and radical gesture of God’s love for us,” Pope Leo XIV said in his catechesis at Wednesday’s General Audience.
‘Death is never the last word’
Jesus, he said, not only died for us, but sought us when we were lost, descending into the place “where only the power of a light capable of penetrating the darkness can reach.”
The Holy Father explained that in this context, the underworld is “not so much a place as a condition, where life is depleted, and pain, solitude, guilt, and separation from God and others reign.”
Descending into hell, Jesus entered “into the very house of death to empty it and free its inhabitants, taking them by the hand one by one.”
“In this act,” the Pope said, “there is all the strength and tenderness of the Paschal message: death is never the last word.”
Bearing witness to the Father’s love
Pope Leo emphasized that “this descent of Christ” relates not only to the past, but is relevant today: Jesus, who entered into the underworld that is the state of the dead, can likewise into “the daily hell of loneliness, shame, abandonment and the struggle of life… to bear witness to the love of the Father.”
Jesus’ encounter with Adam in the underworld, Pope Leo said, is thus “the symbol of all the possible encounters between God and man.”
God leads man out of the darkness, “calling him by name” and leading him back to the light, “with full authority, but also with infinite tenderness, like a father with the child who fears he is no longer loved.”
Nothing untouched by mercy
So, he said, Holy Saturday “is the day in which heaven visits earth most deeply.” The descent into the underworld shows us that “nothing can be excluded from His redemption, not even our nights, not even our oldest faults, not even our broken bonds. There is no past so ruined, no history so compromised that it cannot be touched by mercy.”
Holy Saturday, Pope Leo concluded, “is the silent embrace with which Christ presents all creation to the Father to restore it to His plan of salvation.”
