27 April 2019

Waiting between Good Friday
and Easter Day in Rethymnon

The Harrowing of Hell and the Resurrection in a fresco in the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

George Koros (1923-2014) was one of the finest Greek solo violinists of our time. He was born on the island of Evia in 1923, and he started playing the violin at the age of eight, when his father – who was a church cantor and a teacher of Byzantine music – decided to replace the mandolin with a violin and a bow without strings.

His professional career began a year later, when he began playing at weddings and feasts with his father.

His mother spurned an opportunity for him to have a classical musical education. But Koros later revolutionised Greek folk music through the introduction of the fiddle as an accepted instrument. He became an acclaimed, self-made musician, who composed about 2,000 songs. But despite his reputation in Greek folk music, for me he stands out for his Byzantine hymns, particularly during this Easter weekend in Crete.

In these hymns, Koros returned to his roots in Byzantine music and with his violin he recreates the tradition of the early hymns he learned from his father in church as a boy.

George Koros died in 2014, and was buried in Kiffisia in Athens.

As I was reflecting here in Crete on this Saturday in the Greek calendar – between Good Friday and Easter Day – I recalled how many years ago (2008), during a series of Saturday reflections in Whitechurch parish in Dublin, I invited people to listed to Koros using his violin to plaintively recall the sorrow of the tomb in two pieces: I see thy resting place (Τον Νυμφωνα Σου Βλεπω) and Life in the Holy Sepulchre (Η Ζωη εν Ταφω).

In the Western tradition of the Church, we seem to have contemplated the cross, and then moved to the empty tomb. At times, the deep joys of the Resurrection have often been overshadowed in the Western Church by the way of the Cross, as though the Cross leads only to death. But we have also neglected Christ’s resting place, his tomb, and given little thought to what was happening in the Holy Sepulchre on this day.

Here in Greece, this day, Holy and Great Saturday, is observed solemnly by the Orthodox Church, with hymns and readings that truly explore the theme of the Harrowing of Hell in depth. For this is the day on which Christ’s body lay in the tomb, this is the day on which he visited those who were dead.

The icon of the Harrowing of Hell reminds us that God reaches into the deepest depths to pull forth souls into the kingdom of light. It reminds us how much we are unable to comprehend – let alone take to heart as our own – the creedal statement about Christ’s descent into Hell – ‘He descended into Hell.’

Christ’s descent into Hell is captured in Saint Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2. In the Petrine letters, we are told that when Christ died he went and preached to the spirits in prison ‘who in former times did not obey … For this is the reason the Gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that … they might live in the spirit as God does’ (see I Peter 3: 15b to 4: 8).

In the NRSV, I Peter 4: 6 reads the gospel was ‘proclaimed even to the dead …’, reflecting the original Greek: “εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ νεκροῖς εὐηγγελίσθη …’ The New International Version, however, says the Gospel ‘was preached even to those who are now dead …’ But the word ‘now’ is not in the Greek text. It was inserted to rule out the idea that Christ preached to those who were dead when they were preached to, and instead it says that he brought his good news to people who were dead at the time I Peter was written. If you remove the word ‘now,’ the English becomes ambiguous on that point, just like the Greek is ambiguous there.

The Early Church taught that after his death Christ descended into hell and rescued all the souls, starting with Adam and Eve, who had died under the Fall.

The Harrowing of Hell is intimately bound up with the Resurrection, the Raising from the Dead, for as Christ is raised from the dead he also plummets the depths to bring up, to raise up, those who are dead. The Harrowing of Hell carries us into the gap in time between Christ’s death and resurrection.

In Orthodox icons of the Harrowing of Hell, Christ stands on the shattered doors of Hell. Sometimes, two angels are shown in the pit binding Satan. And we see Christ pulling out of Hell Adam and Eve, imprisoned there since their deaths, imprisoned along with all humanity because of sin. Christ breaks down the doors of Hell and leads the souls of the lost into Heaven.

It is the most radical reversal we can imagine. Death does not have the last word, we need not live our lives entombed in fear. If Adam and Eve are forgiven, and the Sin of Adam is annulled and destroyed, who is beyond forgiveness?

In discussing the ‘Descent into Hell,’ Hans Urs von Balthasar argues that if Christ’s mission did not result in the successful application of God’s love to every intended soul, how then can we think of it as a success. He emphasises Christ’s descent into the fullness of death, so as to be ‘Lord of both the dead and the living’ (Romans 5).

However, in her book Light in Darkness, Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, says that Christ did not descend into the lowest depths of hell, and only stayed in the top levels. She finds untenable his view that Christ’s descent into hell entails experiencing the fullness of alienation, sin and death, which he then absorbs, transfigures, and defeats through the Resurrection. Instead, she claims, Christ descends only to the ‘limbo of the Fathers’ in which the righteous, justified dead of the Old Testament awaited the coming of the Messiah.

Her argument robs the Harrowing of Hell of its soteriological significance. For her, Christ does not descend into hell and experience the depths of alienation between God and humanity opened up by sin. She leaves Christ visiting an already-redeemed and justified collection of Old Testament saints to let them know that he has defeated death.

However, Archbishop Rowan Williams has written beautifully in The Indwelling of Light on the Harrowing of Hell. Christ is the new Adam who rescues humanity from its past, and who starts history anew. ‘The resurrection … is an introduction – to our buried selves, to our alienated neighbours, to our physical world.’ He says: ‘Adam and Eve stand for wherever it is in the human story that fear and refusal began … (This) icon declares that wherever that lost moment was or is – Christ (is) there to implant the possibility … of another future.’ [Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ, p 38.]

I ask myself: what is the difference between the top levels and bottom levels of hell? Is my hell in my heart of my own creation? In my mind, in my home, where I live and work, in my society, in this world? Is hell the nightmares from the past I cannot shake off, or the fears for the future when it looks gloomy and desolate for this planet?

But is anything too hard for Christ?

On this day, the icon of the Harrowing of Hell tells us that there are no limits to God’s ability to search us out and to know us. Where are the depths of your heart and your soul – where darkness prevails, and where you feel even Christ can find no welcome? Those crevices even I am afraid to think about, let alone contemplate, may be beyond my reach. I cannot produce or manufacture my own salvation from that deep, interior hell, hidden from others, and often hidden from myself.

Christ breaks down the gates of Hell, and as the icon powerfully shows, he rips all of sinful humanity from the clutches of death. He descends into the depths of our sin and alienation from God; and by plumbing the depths of hell he suffuses all that is lost and sinful with the radiance of divine goodness, joy and light. If hell is where God is not, and Jesus is God, then his decent into hell pushes back hell’s boundaries. In his descent into hell, Christ reclaims this zone for life, pushing back the gates of death, where God is not, to the farthest limits possible.

The music associated with today in the Orthodox tradition, the icons and the reading, remind me that Christ plummets even those deepest depths, and that his love and mercy can raise us again to new life.

On this Saturday in Crete, as I prepared to take part in this evening's Easter celebrations of the Resurrection in the parish church in Tsesmes, in the eastern suburbs of Rethymnon, I have been thinking of Christ lying in the grave, and thin of how we can ask him to take away all that denies life in us, whether it is a hell of our own making, a hell that has been forced on us, or a hell that surrounds us. Christ reaches down, and lifts us up with him in his Risen Glory. Christ is Risen. Χριστός Ανέστη.



Good Friday in the streets
and churches of Rethymnon

The Square in front of the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymlon was crowded as each church brought its own Epitaphios in procession through the streets (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Throughout the afternoon yesterday [26 April 2019], I spent much of Good Friday, visiting the churches in the heart of Rethymnon to see the decoration of the Epitaphios, the ceremonial bier of Christ. In each church, the Epitaphios is dressed with ribbons, topped with the Book of the Four Gospels, and strewn with petals.

All through the day, people queue up in church to reverence the Epitaphios, some coaxing their children to slip under the bier, all kissing the representation of the dead Christ and the Gospels, and then moving on to reverence the tall, bare cross erected in front of the icon screen.

As the day grew longer, the queues in the churches grew longer too.

The tourist season has not started properly yet, although a few hotels and restaurants are opened already. But, apart from tourists, most of the streets of Rethymnon were still and calm throughout the day. The one furtive piece of buying was by godparents, grandparents and kind aunts seeking Easter candles for children.

Before darkness bean to fall, we went to the Church of the Four Martyrs, the newest and largest church in the centre of Rethymnon.

In the evening, people from the cathedral and other parish churches throughout Rethymnon paraded their Epitaphios solemnly through the narrow streets of the town, headed by brass bands and robed clergy. All converged late in the evening in the large public square in front of the Church of the Four Martyrs, the largest church in Rethymnon, where we had waited throughout the evening for the climax of this unique Greek commemoration.

Brass bands, uniformed soldiers, flower-bedecked biers, robed choirs all stood before the steps of the largest church in the town as The Bishop of Rethymnon, Metropolitan Evgenios of Rethymnon and Avlopotamos, spoke from the steps of the church of the need for love and to dispel fear. There was a ripple of titters as he repeated it in English, ‘Don’t panic.’

We followed the procession of the Epitaphios from the Church of the Four Martyrs back to the Cathedral, headed once again by a brass band, uniformed soldiers in red berets, robed clergy and Metropolitan Evgenios. As people dispersed, they carried their candles home with them.

Throughout today, people are preparing to celebrate the Resurrection after dark this evening.

Tomorrow is a day for families, and nothing moves in Greece on Easter Day.

The Epitaphios in the Cathedral in Rethymnon before the Good Friday processions through the streets last night (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)