St. Melito and Pascha – Hell Is Not the Last Word

Among the most powerful meditations on Pascha are the writings of Melito of Sardis (ca. 190 AD). His homily, On Pascha, is both a work of genius as poetry and a powerful work of theology. Its subject is the Lord’s Pascha – particularly as an interpretation of the Old Testament. It is a common example of early Church thought on Scripture and the Lord’s Pascha. I offer a short verse, a meditation reflecting on the first-born of Egypt, who die in the Old Testament Pascha. He speaks of the darkness of death, and the grasping of Hades:

If anyone grasped the darkness
he was pulled away by death.
And one of the first born,
grasping the material darkness in his hand,
as his life was stripped away,
cried out in distress and terror:
“Whom does my hand hold?
Whom does my soul dread?
Who is the dark one enfolding my whole body?
If it is a father, help me.
If it is a mother, comfort me.
If it is a brother, speak to me.
If it is a friend, support me.
It it is an enemy, depart from me, for I am a first-born.”

Before the first-born fell silent, the long silence held
him and spoke to him:
“You are my first-born,
I am your destiny, the silence of death.”

The poetry is poignant – the words of death as horrifying as any ever spoken, “I am your destiny, the silence of death.” [shades of Darth Vader…]

When translated into existential terms, we ourselves become both the first-born of the Egyptians, and the first-born of Israel. As the first born of Egypt, we too often know our destiny, the silence of death. We know the emptiness of our lives and the hollow constructs of the ego. We know the silence of prayer – not the deep mystical silence of union with God – but the empty silence that hints that no one is listening.

Never before, it would seem to me, has the human race been more hungry for God’s true Pascha. In an over-abundance of experience, we declare ourselves to be the first-born of Egypt. We find ourselves in the grasp of a darkness we do not understand. Our lives are often removed from the immediacy of their existence and instead live and move in the context of the virtual world. We create names and roles for ourselves in a land of meta-make-believe.

Many people indeed live lives of “quiet desperation” simply because they have no hope and cannot imagine where hope would begin. The siren song of modern scientists, who find a strange comfort in the hope of ever-changing DNA, is just another form of the voice, “I am your destiny, the silence of death.” Those who stumble along with some vague hope in extra-terrestrial life (as though it would change the nature of our own existence) and the march of “progress” (the mere aggregation of technology) if they take time to notice, will see again, the “silence of death.”

In our strange, modern world, some have made peace with this silence, the last blow of the secularist hammer on the fullness of the life of faith: better the grave than the resurrection.

St. Melito obviously offers an alternative view of the world. The Christ who “trampled down death by death,” the Lord of Pascha, is foreshadowed in the world (particularly in the accounts of the Old Testament). The Christ proclaimed by St. Melito is the Christ who confronts death itself, including the meaninglessness that we know too well in our modern world. This Christ is God in the Flesh, who has condescended into the existence of man and grappled with the “destiny of the silence of death.” In the face of the death of His friend, Lazarus, Christ cries out, “Lazarus, come forth!” With that cry the Church’s observance of Holy Week begins.

This observance is not the mere recounting of history. The recounting of history (the stories of the Old Testament) has been taken up by Christ into a new and fulfilled existence. The call to Lazarus is now a call to all of humanity. The silence of death has been broken by the voice of the Son of God.

“The day is coming and now is, when those in the grave will hear the voice [of the Son of God] and come forth.”

Our “angel” has come to protect us from the devastation of the angel of death, the one who promises us only “the silence of death.” The Lamb has been slain and the Cross has been signed over our doorposts. We need not go quietly into the night.

On the night of Pascha, the priest stands before the closed doors of a darkened Church and cries, “Let God arise! Let His enemies be scattered! Let those who hate Him flee before His face!” It is the eternal cry of God over His creation. We were not created for death. We were not created for meaninglessness. We were not created for the empty imaginations of modern philosophers. We were created for God and He has come to save us!

Some years back I sat in the tomb of Lazarus. I sat and listened for an echo of the voice which shattered death. I did not hear it with my physical ears – but my heart was lifted up in hope. “All those in the graves will hear His voice.” Before that experience, and many times since, I have been in various forms of that tomb, and sat alongside others who found themselves there as well.

Whatever we may say of hell or sheol, it reflects an experience that we already know. The alienation in the phrase, “I am the silence of death,” accompanies everything that severs our communion with God, the self, and others. If you have been there, and if someone brought you out, then you already know something of the joy of Pascha. That Christ can enter such a place (and that He already has) is itself the truly great miracle. God is so big. How can He become so small? God is life. How can He have died?

St. Paul wrote:

But if the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:11)

There is a “personal” Pascha within each of us, just as there is a personal hell. The hell seeks to tell us that it is our destiny. No matter its face, no matter its torment, hell is not the last word. Christ tramples down that false destiny and welcomes us to His new life.

Christ is risen!

About Fr. Stephen Freeman

Fr. Stephen is a retired Archpriest of the Orthodox Church in America, Pastor Emeritus of St. Anne Orthodox Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is also author of Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe, and Face to Face: Knowing God Beyond Our Shame, as well as the Glory to God podcast series on Ancient Faith Radio.



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14 responses to “St. Melito and Pascha – Hell Is Not the Last Word”

  1. Dee of St Hermans Avatar
    Dee of St Hermans

    Thank you for these beautiful words, Father. So many of us need to hear this.

  2. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Since Pascha my thoughts, spiritually, have been drawn to two things: John 21 and Nativity hymns.

    Existentially, they have been dominated by physical pain, worldly uncertainty and inertia. Those are the elements of hell, it seems, when mixed with my passions.
    Yet, there is the person of Jesus Christ in the midst if it all, offering His love and sustenance–simply, directly in the promise of His Birth:
    “A Virgin cometh today to the cave to give birth. Ineffably to bring forth the Word Eternal. Therefore rejoice oh earth at the message. With the angels and shepherds give glory to Him who shall appear by His own will, ad a young child. He who is from eternity God. ” (Tone 3) The cave of my heart.

    The Person of Jesus Christ offering Himself to us through and in everything, even the preparation of a simple meal on the shore even if we, as yet, do not recognize Him. (John 21)

    Christ is Risen!

  3. Joan Avatar
    Joan

    Wonderful, Father! Thank you .

  4. David Mansfield Avatar
    David Mansfield

    Father Stephen
    Sometimes you write as if it was addressed to me.Those of us who have been to hell know all about the silence of death and even though I’ve been pulled out now there are still days when I feel I’m sliding back .As you say the silence of prayer ,is a tough one ,but I have to keep holding on to Christ and Partaking in the sacraments.
    Glory to God
    Christ is risen

  5. Kathryn Avatar
    Kathryn

    I would like to ask a “how” question. I live and relate and work and do my doing in a secular environment. Aside from Church services, I am alone in my Orthodoxy. How can I carry, let alone share, my faith into this environment when too often the world around me has no thought of Christ?

  6. Elpidios Avatar
    Elpidios

    Truly he is Risen!

  7. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Excellent readings and perception Fr. Freeman, and this is a much needed message in today’s despairing worldly world.

  8. Santosh John Samuel Avatar
    Santosh John Samuel

    Wonderful Father, rousing. Thank you.

  9. David Waite Avatar
    David Waite

    I recently read Melito’s On Pascha for one of the M. Div. Classes I have been auditing. I was struck by the following from Alistar Stewart’s (the translator’s) introduction:

    “[W]here as the pagans differed in the extent to which they would consider the events described [in their texts, e.g., the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid] to be historical . . . For Melitó the significance of the events he describes inheres in their historical character . . . The metaphor is understood in the light of the gospel which is the reality to which the metaphor points, but the metaphor must retain its own literal and historical significance in order to be an effective metaphor pointing to a greater reality.”

    I think this highlights an important problem with the modern approach to Scripture. Scripture is allegorical and metaphorical as much ancient literature is, but the metaphors and allegories are grounded in historical realities so that they point to a greater reality. Other masterpieces of ancient literature can do no more than point to truths about our present reality. As important as those truths may be, they fall far short of the greater reality to which the Scriptures point. .

  10. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    David, that is a good insight. To be really and deeply historical the Scriptures have to be grounded in humanity even to the point of God taking on flesh and dying as a man. Being Resurrected in His Divinity and His humanity as well.

    Both God and man. Fully God and fully man. Tempted, but without sin. So, hell is destroyed. Repentance becomes the path to true victory even in the midst of pain.

    Both the exclamation Christ is Risen, and the penitential reality of the Jesus Prayer and the majority of the Sacraments are of the same cloth. The incarnational/historical reality of Jesus.

  11. connie Avatar
    connie

    Kathryn let the light of Christ shine through you as you interact with others in the work place, in your community (your town, city, village) and in the places that you encounter other people. It isn’t so much standing on the rooftops and shouting the “creed, bible verses, etc.)”. Your Orthodox Christian beliefs are you in whatever activities you are engaged in. cbs

  12. Byron Avatar
    Byron

    I would like to ask a “how” question. I live and relate and work and do my doing in a secular environment. Aside from Church services, I am alone in my Orthodoxy. How can I carry, let alone share, my faith into this environment when too often the world around me has no thought of Christ?

    Karen, St. Seraphim of Sarov says, “Acquire the spirit of peace and a thousand souls around you will be saved.” Perhaps that is how it is “done”, so to speak. In all situations, we work on our own heart and God will provide the increase. Sometimes we never see or realize how we affect those around us.

    I sometimes think there is great wisdom in only offering the Faith after others have asked. But that takes a great deal of patience and long-suffering, which I can be quite poor at living!

  13. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Karen, although it often seems as if one is alone, in the Church that is simply not possible. The Church reveals the true nature of creation: an interwoven fabric of dynamic spirals which are all interconnected by His Grace and Mercy a bit like Jacob’s Ladder only more. Life, moving from glory to glory. Hell on the other hand is where a soul is alone–seemingly cut off from everyone. Alone with one’s own will as described in the play “No Exit” by Sartre and perversely celebrated by the modern mind ala Nietzche…

    When I feel alone and cut off, I usually am not being humble.

    When I contend with those who do not believe in God as He reveals Himself in the Church, I find I end up strengthening the other person’s unbelief.

    Christ is Risen and with Himself He has raised all the dead. Even me.

  14. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Bryon, been thinking about your comment regarding patience, praying about it too. I was led to Mt 7. Verse 6 is the famous instruction not to throw pearls before swine. The first 5 verses are about not judging and cleansing one’s own heart which is often nit taken into account when quoting verse 6.

    Trying to share with others who do not want to know is sometimes necessary but it cannot be done solely out of one’s personal will and desire I think.

    God be with you.

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