- John 20:11-18 ("Jesus said to her, Mary!")

Just as a Iewish boy waits for the shining of the first star so the festival can begin, so we "listen in" to our own life.  Does it sound familiar that we looked and looked almost without hope of finding anything and suddenly one day we realized our searching had come imperceptibly to rest?...What had changed?  Had we become resigned and given up the search, or were we the one who had been found when we always thought we must be the one to find it ourselves?...Had a piece of the hidden Easter experience been allotted to us here without recognizing it?...

- Ancient Russian icon - Christ's descent into Hell  (picture meditation)

Focus for the picture:

The Easter event presented in the icon of Christ's Descent into Hell  comes out of the Syrian-Palestinian culture and became a widely dispersed way of presenting the Easter mystery in this painting of the Eastern Church.   Christ breaks into the realm of the underworld and becomes victor over death (the doors of Hell are broken and Jesus stands on them).  He grasps Adam by the wrist of his right hand (an old gesture of the sovereign by which the victor took a defeated Prince into his service - the wrist is the place in which the pulse of life is felt in the artery) while near by Eve prays with covered hands.  In the background are standing other figures of the underworld who are waiting and looking at the one who will release them.  On the left side we see King David and King Solomon, behind them John the Baptist, the "greatest of the prophets".  The rocky ground is broken up and reveals the darkness of the deep abyss, but Christ stands in his radiant garment of victory in the midst of this realm of death as the victor who breaks into all darkness.  Over against other presentations of the descent into Hell this one has become particularly valuable to me because the view is not diverted by other details such as the bound princes of hell, the implements of torture (which now have become the signs of victory ) and others.  The view is focused solely on the essential one: on the Victor who breaks into the Kingdom of darkness and releases the prisoners there.

Suggestions for meditation on the picture:

- Looking at this presentation of the Easter victory of Jesus always awakens in me a new knowledge of the darkness which is also in me (see Third Section).  But at the same time the certainty that Christ is the "Victor over Sin, Death and the Devil" has also broken into my inner darkness and his light shines through and conquers this darkness.  In looking at this picture in a meditating self examination let the victory of Christ truly enter into you  (second dimension of a spiritual symbol) and become reality .  In the course of this week we will develop that in different practical ways...

- In this way we discover more and more a further possibility of meditating.  In experiencing the Easter victory of Christ over your own inner darkness the faith grows in you so that the Easter victory applies to the entire world.  In the night of Easter the world with its sins of darkness, its death and its evil powers was overcome at its deepest point.  Where you open yourself in faith to this reality, there you allow the Easter victory to enter this world so it can "be realized" visibly.  This icon can be helpful in doing that...