The story of Jesus Christ’s life, passion, death, and resurrection is unequivocally the most consequential story in the whole of human history, literally defining the course of the world over the past 2,000 years. To many Christians, the story is intimately familiar, repeated time and time again — especially in the days leading up to Easter Sunday — and recounted and analyzed in countless sermons and homilies, theology and philosophy books, and even documentaries and podcasts.

It is, perhaps, understandable if the tale of Christ’s ministry, passion, death, and resurrection has become so familiar to many of us that it has become effectively mundane: we no longer gaze upon the crucified Christ with sorrow, gratitude, and terror, and the sight of the empty tomb no longer inspires awe, wonder, and unparallelled joy. This may be understandable, but it is not excusable to be content with such a state of dull familiarity.

It is our duty as Christians to repeatedly renew our love for the God-man who, for love of us, took our humble form upon Himself, lived among us, elevated and ennobled our minds and souls, suffered brutally, died tortuously, and rose again from the dead gloriously. Every year, in the days before Easter Sunday, I attempt to renew this love in my own heart and entrench it ever more deeply and firmly by reflecting not only upon the story of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, but on the manner in which God the Father arranged and guided the course of human history to prepare for His Son’s passion, death, and resurrection. Even the most wicked, vile, tragic, and calamitous of human errors and sins were used by God to bring about even greater good than would have been otherwise, expounding both the grief and horror of Christ’s death and the glory and majesty of His triumph over the grave.

To illustrate this point, let me share an ancient homily on what happened after Christ’s death and before His resurrection. This homily is featured in the Roman Catholic Office of Readings for Holy Saturday and, although its authorship is unknown, it is believed to originate from either the second or third century:

“Something strange is happening — there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and He has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and Hell trembles with fear.

“He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, He has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, He who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won Him the victory. At the sight of Him, Adam, the first man He had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ Christ answered him: ‘And with your spirit.’ He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.

“‘I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants, I now, by my own authority, command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise.

“‘I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in Hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth.

“‘For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

“‘See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

“‘I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in Hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

“‘Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in Heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God.

“‘The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of Heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.’”

Certainly, this homily is meaningful, moving, and beautiful, in no small part because it hearkens back to the very first humans God created, the very first sin ever committed, the very first blow of the hammer upon the nails in Christ’s sacred hands. But it also reveals the richness of human history and of Christ’s birth, life, passion, death, and resurrection. Bear in mind that Golgotha, the site of Christ’s crucifixion, was also known as the “place of the skull” (Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22, Luke 23:33, John 19:17). Ancient Christian traditions in both the East and West accept that Golgotha was most probably the place where Adam’s skull was buried. How fitting that Christ should repay with His precious blood the debt that Adam and his descendants had incurred against God through sin upon the very place where Adam’s skull lay.

After all, it was through the sin of Adam and Eve that death entered into the world. This also was no accident or mere punitive provision. Human beings are not bodies that happen to have souls, nor are we souls that happen to have bodies; we are body-soul composites, our essence is comprised not of one with the other as an appendage but of both body and soul together. As such, the body and soul affect and impact each other intimately and intrinsically. In “The Screwtape Letters,” C.S. Lewis succinctly phrased it thus, writing in the character of the titular experienced senior demon: “[F]or they [being humans] constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls.”

The concept is well-seeded throughout the history of Christian thought and theology. When Adam and Eve sinned, the effects of that sin necessarily impacted both body and soul. The early Christian thinker and writer Augustine of Hippo explained that sin corrupted human nature and disordered both body and soul; death, he posited, was not simply a punishment for sin, nor even merely a necessary consequence of sin, although it is both, but was also a remedy: death separated the body from the soul and, while this experience is a frightening and even painful one, separating as it does the two fundamental aspects of our essence as humans, it allows both body and soul to be perfected and healed of the wounds and scars wrought by sin, so that we might spend eternity with the triune God in Heaven.

The 13th century Dominican philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas refined this concept in his exhaustive “Summa Theologiae,” clarifying that original sin (that is, the sin of Adam and Eve) violated original justice, in which the body-soul composite existed perfectly. That body-soul composite could not continue to exist as it had previously, since its existence would no longer be perfect. Thus, death was more than just a punishment for sin, it was also a means of expunging its damage, allowing both body and soul to be separated from one another and purged of the effects of sin so that they might be reunited in a state of perfection in Heaven.

When we contemplate Christ’s passion and death in particular, we often lay great emphasis on the passion, on the flagellation, the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross, and the crucifixion itself. Death is, to us, simply what comes next. Of course Christ died — who wouldn’t after such gruesome and grueling torture? But we must also recognize the gravity of Christ’s death; we take death almost for granted, but Christ had no need of death: what imperfection was there in His body-soul composite upon this earth that needed rectifying? What was His sin against original justice? He had no imperfection, nothing in need of repair, no sin, no injustice. Certainly, we must believe that, were He not executed upon the ignominious cross, Christ would not have been subject to death.

First of all, there is the evidence that He conquered death when He rose from the grave. We often say that Christ conquered death, and so He did; but not as a brave knight might conquer a powerful and fearsome warlord; rather, Christ conquered death as a King might stamp out a rebellious baron and his rabble. No more is death to Christ than a baron or magistrate, appointed by His own hand, who seeks to lay some claim or exercise some authority over the Sovereign which is far beyond his reach. In Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” the Christ-figure of Aslan says, upon his own resurrection from death, that the White Witch who executed him upon the stone table did not remember that “there is a magic deeper still…” The great Lion says:

“Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

While Lewis mythologizes and perhaps even simplifies the story of the resurrection, the reality is just as fantastic and infinitely more striking to the soul: death held no sway over Christ. In fact, death was one of His creations, just as we are, just as the wood of the cross upon which He died was, just as the stones at the foot of the cross which soaked up His blood were. Martyrdom is an awesome act of sacrifice, the willing laying down of one’s life; but the fact remains that one will have to lay down one’s life at some point anyway. No such fact stood before Christ. He did not subject Himself to an early death in order to redeem us, but gave up His life which He never otherwise would have had to, in order to ransom us from captivity. Christ’s death was, in fact, not only the ultimate martyrdom but the perfected Platonic form of martyrdom, of which all other martyrdoms are but noble imitations and homages.

Since the beginning of time, God prepared the world and the whole of human history to point towards and glorify in the passion, death, and resurrection of His only begotten Son. All of time prior to the crucifixion reaches out towards it, and all of time since the resurrection reaches back towards it. Through His death, Christ ended the tyranny of the grave, descending into Hell, the very stronghold of the fallen rebel angel Satan, to awaken those who slumbered there and set free those captive there; and through His resurrection, He opened the gates of Heaven, so that all who cling tightly to Him might see fulfilled the promise of death: the perfection of both body and soul and the healing of the grievous wound wrought by sin.

What a bitter moment that must have been for Satan. What diabolical delight he, the epitome of pride, must have taken in seeing God Himself humiliated, mocked, stripped, and treated as a common criminal. How he must have reveled in seeing the blood of God spilled so carelessly, so callously upon the long road to Calvary. What pleasure he must have had in that anguished cry from the cross, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani” (Mark 15:34). How he must have grinned to see Mary, Jesus’s mother, weeping at the foot of the cross, that woman who had brought Christ into the world by saying, “I am the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38), where Satan had only ever proclaimed, in the notorious words of John Milton, “Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.”

Indeed, Satan may have imagined himself the victor: God had become man, but man had turned against Him and slain Him. The people whom God had prepared, for centuries, to recognize and receive their Messiah had rejected Him and called for His execution. The crowd which had so gladly gathered at the gates of Jerusalem a week before to hail Christ as the King and the Son of David, to cry out, “Hosanna” (Matthew 21:9, Mark 11:9-10, Luke 19:38, John 12:13), now lined the same streets to spit upon Him as He tramped to His death. The only ones whom Christ counted as friends had betrayed Him and handed Him over to death, abandoned Him, and even denied knowing Him — all except the Apostle John.

(John’s presence at the foot of the cross is testament to the all-encompassing nature of Christ’s martyrdom-perfected. Tradition — and, in many cases, the annals of history — stipulate that all of the Apostles were put to death for their faith in Christ, all except John. While the rest of the Apostles fled after Christ was apprehended in the Garden of Gethsemane, John followed Him all the way to the cross. So great was the Apostle’s love for his Lord that, although no nails pierced his hands and no drop of his blood was spilled, he might be said to have died that day on the cross with his beloved Christ. The rest of the Apostles — and, over the course of the centuries, countless Christian faithful — offered their own lives in union with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, dying martyrs’ deaths. John partook in Christ’s sacrifice in the very moment.)

Perhaps Satan was merely savoring what evil before the downfall he could foresee for himself, or perhaps he was truly blinded by hate and pride and believed his victory complete. Either way, he found Christ, the God-man, striding into Hell, wielding the cross upon which He had died as a knight wields a lance or a banner. When that irresistible, invincible face illuminated his decrepit, long-unlit halls, did Satan grovel, I wonder? Did he beg? I think not; for what would he beg? Mercy? Peace? A tiny corner of eternity to call his own? No. But I am sure he cowered before the face of God. What Satan envisioned as his greatest triumph was turned around in his own hands to be his greatest and most lasting humiliation.

There is much to dwell upon, much to contemplate in the story of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection: its place as the pinnacle and lynchpin of human history, the harrowing of Hell, the humiliation of Satan, all of these themes and episodes may serve to inspire us to greater and deeper love for the God who died for us. Of course, that is the greatest aspect of all in this tale: love. There is no greater image, no better manifestation, no more perfect encapsulation and embodiment of love than the image of Christ crucified.

May we all be moved, with God’s grace, to the same love which John bore for Christ, so that we also might stand at the foot of the cross to die with Christ in our hearts and rise with Him to life everlasting.