One of the ancient hymns for the Holy Saturday has the words:
To earth the Master came down to save Adam,
and not finding him on earth,
He descended into the realm of the dead seeking him there.
Adam was afraid when God walked in Paradise.
But now he rejoices when God descends into Hades.
Then he fell, but now he is raised up.
This is the image on the icon of the Resurrection, depicting the harrowing of hell. Our Lord stands on the broken gates of Hades, grasping Adam and Eve by the hands, surrounded by the Old Testament Saints.
He now holds the keys of death and hell. The price of sin which He has paid is death itself. He has entered into its shadowy reality and made the way through it for all of us. Trampling down death by death, and on those in the tombs bestowing life. A change has been wrought in the very fabric of existence, which is why this Feast is the center of the Christian year, the queen of feasts.
Those in Christ, who enter mystically into His death in holy Baptism, also enter mystically into His Resurrection.
In his sonnet “The Resurrection”, the great poet and preacher, John Donne uses an alchemical image to describe the new mode of being into which Jesus entered through the resurrection from the dead, and which is now available to us through our incorporation and participation in Him:
“He was all gold when he lay down, but rose / All tincture.”
One object of alchemy was to discover the tincture which would turn baser metals into gold. Bur it also had a spiritual aspect – to turn the baser metal of the soul into an enlightened and superior substance, as it were. The Risen Christ, in this image, has become this true tincture, turning the lives He enters into “gold”.
For us, Baptism and Chrismation are not mere outward expressions of one’s conversion, but spiritual transactions. The Great High Priest, the celebrant of all the Mysteries of the Church, effects a transformation of the soul, which, of course, must be entered into with repentance and faith. And it must be entered into daily, rather than once for all at some catalogued moment of conversion. This spiritual transaction is a primary act of faith. We enter into the Resurrection of Christ, not as some sort of emotional, or symbolic action, but in the depths of our souls.
We are new creatures who bear the Resurrection of Christ in our very bones by the Spirit of God that we may manifest the Risen life of Christ. A new life is at work in us now. We may ignore it, or we may embrace it, as we will, but we cannot deny it. And it has forever changed the way we experience death, if we enter by faith into the mysteries of baptism, chrismation and Eucharist.
The Resurrection transforms us as it transforms time, and marks Sunday, the Lord’s day and especially this Lord’s Day of the Resurrection as both the 8th day of the in-breaking of eternity into time, and the 1st day of the new creation, which awaits its own complete manifestation in the fulness of time.
This is our new reality, the power of the Resurrection, preparing us for entry into the life of the age to come. Incorporating us into the Body of the One Who has died and risen again, Whose tree has become the Tree of Life for all who will partake of its fruit.
As St. Paul writes to the Romans:
“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you.”