Last evening, I drove to Buffalo at the request of a Sonshine Friend to visit her mom in a nursing home. Her mother has suffered from depression for far too long. Worse she had told her daughter that she was “going to hell.” Where did this horrible thought come from? Who had nurtured this doom in the heart of this woman of faith? I sat on one side of her wheel chair holding this woman’s hand while her daughter translated in mom’s native language this story.On a holy card, there was a woman huddled behind a locked door, paralyzed by fear and darkness. Outside the door Jesus stands with a lantern, knocking ready to relieve this woman of her burden. But there’s a hitch: this door only has a knob on the inside. Jesus cannot enter unless the woman unlocks the door from her side. The implication here is that God cannot help unless we first let God in. For our fearful mom, this will not work because “in her mind” she is going to hell.
I believe that many of us face crosses like this fearful mother when we are paralyzed by some sin and overcome by darkness that we can no longer help ourselves. I believe at this moment God comes through our locked doors, (our minds burning with images of hell) to stand inside our fears and paralysis, and breathe out peace.
The love that is revealed in Jesus’ suffering and death is so other-centered that it can forgive and embrace its executioners, passed through locked doors, melt frozen hearts, and penetrate the walls of fear. In a word, it can descend into our private hells and breathe peace.
I anointed this tortured soul with the Sacrament of the Sick and gave her Holy Communion. And then I asked her a simple question. Do you believe that Jesus loves you? And she smiled, “yes.” At one point, she asked, “Where is Jesus?” I told her in the voice of her daughter translating the words of peace to her heart. Then she smiled and said, “I believe.”
Here is the key. When your thoughts go off into darkness because you think you cannot be forgiven of your sins. “He descended into hell,” means that there is no hell where Jesus cannot, will not. be. Why, they haven’t invented the hell where his love cannot penetrate. They haven’t built the door that his love cannot pass through.
I have no doubt that when this woman goes home to God she will wake up on the other side and find Christ standing inside her fear and darkness, breathing out peace. “He descended into hell” simply means that Jesus’ love is there in the worst places of our lives.
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends who fear that that they are going to hell. Come at this moment with your lantern of hope and unlock our fear and darkness. Come and bless these little ones with your healing and peace.
