Easter Monday morning, a quick trip back to my bed after the morning Mass. This was a time I intended for some extended stay under the sheets, air-conditioner in full blast, in a thoroughly darkened room. My plan immediately failed as I was rudely awakened by a frantic call from the guard post, the voice at the other end panting and garbled, as he cautiously asked if I could attend to a very urgent request from some Baranggay officials to bless, according to them, a lifeless, fully developed fetus they have unearthed from beneath the neighborhood garbage heap at 14th avenue. Grudgingly, I dressed up and hurried to the site where they have placed the lifeless, little angel, only to be met by a most revolting sight: it was not just a fully-developed fetus as they have reported just a short while back. It was a tiny human being, which by the time I saw it, was already bluish-green, the color of bile, carelessly wrapped with a dirty, brown, striped t-shirt, with a dotted, Navy Blue handkerchief tightly wound around the baby's delicate and fragile neck. By the looks of it, the infant seems to have undeniably died of strangulation a few hours after its birth, most probably, during midnight of the previous day.
I was simply stunned and paralyzed where I was standing. But I have to summon enough courage to overcome my revulsion and lead everyone in that hall into an anguished plea to God for mercy and aid for the hapless victim, as well as a cry to bring to justice those who might be responsible for the atrocity.
Early morning of Tuesday I was at Precinto Uno in del Pan, Tondo, celebrating Mass right inside the decrepit jail, with about fifty inmates, half of them juvenile and underage, and a handful of police officers who don't seem to pay attention at all to what I and the three Missionary of Charity sisters where doing. The jail house reeks of a most disgusting combination of rotten food, foul-smelling, unwashed and sweaty bodies, and urine. The air inside, stale and humid. It requires a great deal of effort even just to be able to breathe. Here in this hellish quarters I found myself offering the Holy Liturgy for Tuesday within the Easter Octave.
A murdered infant and an infernal jail, two glimpses of the many faces of hell in our midst. I found myself, unworthy as I am, to be a carrier, though a bit reluctant, of the great and redeeming news of Christ's Resurrection even to these two instances of human depravity. "He descended into hell..." confesses the Apostles' Creed. Christ did not only rise from the dead. He did not only brake open the tomb. Our Faith teaches that the Blessed Savior descended even to the depths of hades and destroyed its vile doors, leading those who had been held in bondage by sin and death into the fullness of redemption.
Christ the Risen King did enter hell! He did so not to be overcome by it but to annihilate it and render it powerless and inutile! His descent into hell is a declaration that He ALONE is King and Lord; that the merit and accomplishment of His Most Glorious Passion, Death and Triumphant Resurrection know no bounds nor limits.
The Harrowing of Hell is an essential element in the Holy Mystery of Easter. To put faith in it is to allow one's hell, bondage, sinfulness and many deaths to be totally transformed, renewed, and redeemed by the Resurrected Christ. Easter is never merely a historical event that happened more than a couple of millenia ago. It is just as importantly about the Risen Lord saving me, freeing me, forgiving me, resurrecting me, healing me of all my infirmities, empowering me, rejuvenating me, giving birth to me anew and recreating me from the shards of my conquered, former, sinful self, in the here and now of my present existence. The Great Easter Message must therefore be equally proclaimed in the Exultet of the sanctuary as well as in the seedy nooks and crannies of public halls and local jails.
Easter is not just about Christ Jesus transporting me to the great heights of His Glory; it is also about His plunging into the depths of my degeneracy, in order to lift me up and rescue me from death and damnation.
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