Descent

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 27, 2025

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Descent

Seek and you will find;

Knock and the door will be opened to you.

Famous paintings show Jesus knocking on a door with no knob on the outside; we must open it ourselves. But Jesus is often more proactive, and when my own hands are tied for one reason or another, I hope he will find his way in.

The Apostles’ Creed (following 1 Peter 3 and Ephesians 4) says of Jesus after he died on the cross, “He descended into hell.” This is Jesus at his proactive best. Here is a thought from Ron Rolheiser:

John, in his gospel, gives us this picture: On the day Jesus rose from the dead, he finds his disciples huddled in fear inside a locked room. Jesus, unlike imitation versions of Holman Hunt’s great painting, does not stand outside the door and knock, waiting for the disciples to come and open the door. He goes right through the locked doors, stands inside their huddled circle of fear, and breathes out peace to them. He isn’t helpless to enter when they are too frightened, depressed, and wounded to open the door for him. He can descend into their hell by going through the doors they have locked out of fear.

That is also true for the various private hells into which we sometimes descend. We can reach a point in our lives where others can no longer reach into our pain and where we are too wounded, frightened, and paralyzed to open the door to let anyone in. Human care can no longer reach us. But Jesus can enter those locked doors, Jesus can descend into our hell.

Ron writes of a woman he knew who committed suicide.

I am sure that when she woke up on the other side, she found Jesus standing inside her fear and sickness, breathing out peace, love, and forgiveness, just as he did in the darkness and chaos that he descended into in his death. I am sure too that she, sensitive young woman that she was, found in his ordering, forgiving breath a peace that was, for all kinds of reasons, denied her in this life.

Our belief that Jesus did, and can, “descend into hell” is the single most consoling doctrine within all religion. It gives us hope when, humanly, there isn’t any. Sometimes, because of illness and hurt, someone we love can descend into a place where we, no matter our love and effort, can no longer reach. But not all is lost: Jesus can descend into that hell and, even there, breathe out a peace that again orders the chaos.

In my own experience with despair, when I not only felt lost but was lost, I had to choose between pushing against what felt immovable or … not. Generally advisors would tell me to do something – to pray or read the Bible, go to church, don’t spend too much time alone, etc.

There is another way, a way written five hundred years ago by a person who experienced his own deep despair – John of the Cross, Spanish poet and mystic. A contemporary interpreter puts it this way:

When the dark night descends on the soul, its radiance blinds the intellect. You can no longer formulate concepts; you don’t even want to. It is tempting to consider this inability to engage the intellect as a failing. It is easy to assume that you are wasting time. 

Do not force it, John wrote. Stop trying to figure it out. Drop down into a state of guileless quietude and abide there. This is no time for discursive meditation, no time for pondering theological doctrines or asserting articles of faith. 

Your only task now is to set your soul free. Take a break from ideas and knowledge…. Content yourself with a loving attentiveness toward the Holy One. This requires no effort, no agitation, no desire to taste or feel or understand. Patiently persevere in this state of prayer that has no name. 

“Trust in God,” John wrote, “who does not abandon those who seek him with a simple and righteous heart.” By doing nothing now, the soul accomplishes great things.

For me trusting God feels impossible sometimes. But where else can I go? No wonder Rolheiser’s young friend killed herself. Isn’t God standing silently by while my life falls apart?

Another poet, Rainer Maria Rilke in a 20^th century letter to a friend who was filled with despair, echoed John of the Cross:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

One of these endless days Jesus will come through the door without a handle and suddenly be inside with me. I just don’t know when. Maybe he’s here now and I can’t see him. Is there a “distant day” when my eyes will see again?

Till then there is time to just be still.

(Genesis 18, Psalm 138, Colossians 2, Romans 8, Luke 11)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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