RTE No 20 Interior - Road to Emmaus Journal

Road to Emmaus Vol. VI, No. 1 (#20)humanity as well as His divinity. According to the Syriac tradition, the mysteryof the incarnation is expressed in the succession of Christ’s descents: Hisdescent into a body (incarnation itself), His descent into the Jordan (the baptismand sanctification of the waters which, in the Syrian tradition, representthe power of chaos and death and are also associated with Hades), and Hisdescent into Sheol, where Christ recovers Adam, the first man.However, in reading the Syriac fathers, it is not always clear precisely whoChrist led out of Sheol. In Syriac, as in Hebrew, the word Adam can designateeither the first man or humanity as a whole, as a generic notion. This dualusage generated two views on who was taken by Christ to Paradise after Hisdescent. Authors such as St. Ephrem the Syrian hold that Christ has taken allwho sojourned in Hades with Him to Paradise, while other authors, likeAphrahat, insist that He took only Adam, Eve, and the righteous with Him.So, the descent into Sheol is viewed as a pinnacle of salvation in the Syriantradition. Christ defeats death (and thereby the sin through which deathentered into the world), thus liberating all of humanity from darkness, slaveryto sin, and death, bringing salvation and illumination to the entire human race.I was very touched when I first read these lines about Christ’s descent inthe poem of Jacob of Serugh 7 :He went down to the sea of the dead to be baptized likeThose who bathe;He brought up from thence the pearl, Adam, depicted in His own image.St. Ephrem the Syrian, the poetic genius of the Syrians, mentions thedescent of Christ into Sheol in his Hymns on the Resurrection 1:8, 14-15:From on high He came down as Lord,From the womb He came forth as a servantDeath knelt before Him in Sheol,And Life worshipped Him in His resurrection.Blessed is His victory! …He did not shrink from the unclean,He did not turn away from sinners,In the sincere He greatly delighted,At the simple He greatly rejoiced.Blessed is His teaching!7 Brock, S.P., “Baptismal Themes in the Writings of St. Jacob of Serugh”, OCA 199 (1978), pp. 325-347.20