(III) Fr. George Florvsky: High Priest and Redeemer

Icon by the hand of Fr. Stamatis Skliris

In the Epistle to the Hebrews the redeeming work of Our Lord is depicted as the ministry of the High Priest. Christ comes into the world to accomplish the Will of God. Through the eternal Spirit He offers His own self to God, offers His blood for the remission of human sins, and this He accomplishes through the Passion. By His blood, as the blood of the New Testament, of the New Covenant, He enters heaven and enters within the very Holy of Holies, behind the veil. After the suffering of death He is crowned with glory and honor, and sits on the right hand of God the Father for ever. The sacrificial offering begins on earth and is consummated in heaven, where Christ presented and is still presenting us to God, as the eternal High Priest — "High Priest of the good things to come" (άρχιερευς των μελλόντων αγαθών) as the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, as the minister of the true tabernacle and sanctuary of God. In brief, as the Mediator of the New Covenant. Through the death of Christ is revealed Life Everlasting, "the powers of the age to come" are disclosed and shown forth (δυνάμεις τε μέλλοντος αιώνος). In the blood of Jesus is revealed the new and living way, the way into that eternal Sabbath, when God rests from His mighty deeds.
Thus the death of the Cross is a sacrificial offering. And to offer a sacrifice does not mean only to surrender. Even from a merely moral point of view, the whole significance of sacrifice is not the denial itself, but the sacrificial power of love. The sacrifice is not merely an offering, but rather a dedication, a consecration to God. The effective power of sacrifice is love (I Cor. 13:3). But the offering of the sacrifice is more than the evidence of love, it is also a sacramental action, a liturgical office, or even a mystery. The offering of the sacrifice of the Cross is the sacrifice of love indeed, "as Christ also hath loved us, and given Himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour" (Ephes. 5:2). But this love was not only sympathy or compassion and mercy towards the fallen and heavy-laden. Christ gives Himself not only "for the remission of sins," but also for our glorification. He gives Himself not only for sinful humanity, but also for the Church: to cleanse and to hallow her, to make her holy, glorious and spotless (Ephes. 5:25). The power of a sacrificial offering is in its cleansing and hallowing effect. And the power of the sacrifice of the Cross is that the Cross is the path of glory. On the Cross the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in Him (John 13:31) Here is the fullness of the sacrifice. "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?" (Luke 24:26). The death of the Cross was effective, not as a death of an Innocent One, but as the death of the Incarnate Lord. "We needed an Incarnate God; God put to death, that we might live" — to use a bold phrase of St. Gregory of Nazianzus.⁹¹ This is the "dreadful and most glorious mystery" of the Cross. On Golgotha the Incarnate Lord celebrates the Holy Service, in ara crucis, and offers in sacrifice His own human nature, which from its conception "in the Virgin’s womb" was assumed into the indivisible unity of His Hypostasis, and in this assumption was restored to all its original sinlessness and purity. In Christ there is no human hypostasis. His personality is Divine, yet incarnate. There is the all-complete fullness of human nature, "the whole human nature," and therefore Christ is the "perfect man," as the Council of Chalcedon said. But there was no human hypostasis. And consequently on the Cross it was not a man that died. "For He who suffered was not common man, but God made man, fighting the contest of endurance," says St. Cyril of Jerusalem.⁹² It may be properly said that God dies on the Cross, but in His own humanity. "He who dwelleth in the highest is reckoned among the dead, and in the little grave findeth lodging."⁹³ This is the voluntary death of One who is Himself Life Eternal, who is in very truth the Resurrection and the Life. A human death indeed but obviously death within the hypostasis of the Word, the Incarnate Word. And thence a resurrecting death.
"I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!" (Luke 12:49-50). Fire — the Holy Spirit — descending from on high in fiery tongues in the "dreadful and unsearchable mystery of Pentecost." This was baptism by the Spirit. And Baptism, this is the death on the Cross itself and the shedding of blood, "the baptism of martyrdom and blood, with which Christ Himself also was baptized," as St. Gregory of Nazianzus suggested.⁹⁴ The death on the Cross as a baptism by blood is the very essence of the redeeming mystery of the Cross. Baptism is a cleansing. And the Baptism of the Cross is, as it were, the cleansing of human nature, which is travelling the path of restoration in the Hypostasis of the Incarnate Word. This is a washing of human nature in the outpoured sacrificial blood of the Divine Lamb. And first of all, a washing of the body: not only a washing away of sins, but a washing away of human infirmities and of mortality itself. It is the cleansing in preparation for the coming resurrection: a cleansing of all human nature, of all humanity in the person of its new and mystical First-born, in the "Second Adam." This is the baptism by blood of the whole Church. "Thou hast purchased Thy Church by the power of Thy Cross." And the whole Body ought to be and must be baptized with the baptism of the Cross. "The cup that I drink, you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized" (Mark 10:39; Matthew 20:23).⁹⁵
Further, the death of the Cross is the cleansing of the whole world. It is the baptism by blood of all creation, the cleansing of the Cosmos through the cleansing of the Microcosm. "A purification not for a small part of man’s world, not for a short time, but for the whole Universe and through eternity," to quote St. Gregory of Nazianzus again.⁹⁶ Therefore all creation mysteriously partakes in the mortal Passion of the Incarnate Master and Lord. "All creation changed its face in terror when it beheld Thee hanging on the Cross, Ο Christ… The sun was darkened and of earth the foundations were shaken: All things suffered in sympathy with Thee, Who hadst created all things."⁹⁷ This was not co-suffering of compassion or pity, but rather co-suffering of awe and trembling. "The foundations of the earth were set in trembling by the terror of Thy might," co-suffering in the joyous apprehension of the great mystery of the resurrecting death. "For by the blood of Thy Son is the earth blessed." "Many indeed are the miracles of that time," says St. Gregory of Nazianzus, "God crucified, the sun darkened and rekindled again; for it was fitting that with the Creator the creatures should co-suffer. The veil rent in twain. Blood and water shed from His side, blood because He was man, and water because He was higher than man. The earth quaked, rocks were rent for the sake of the Rock. The dead rose up for a pledge of the final and general resurrection. The miracles before the grave and at the grave — who will worthily sing? But none is like the miracle of my salvation. A few drops of blood recreate the whole world and become to us what rennet is to milk, binding us together and compressing us in unity."⁹⁸
The death of the Cross is a sacrament, it has not only a moral, but also a sacramental and liturgical meaning. It is the Passover of the New Testament. And its sacramental significance is revealed at the Last Supper. It may seem rather strange that the Eucharist should precede Calvary, and that in the Upper Room the Savior Himself should give His Body and His Blood to the disciples. "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you" (Luke 22:20). However, the Last Supper was not merely a prophetic rite, just as the Eucharist is no mere symbolic remembrance. It is a true sacrament. For Christ who performs both is the High Priest of the New Testament. The Eucharist is the sacrament of the Crucifixion, the broken Body and the Blood outpoured. And along with this it is also the sacrament of the transfiguration, the mysterious and sacramental "conversion" of the flesh into the glorious spiritual food (μεταβολή). The broken Body, dying, yet, in death itself, rising again. For the Lord went voluntarily to the Cross, the Cross of shame and glory. St. Gregory of Nyssa gives the following explanation. "Christ does not wait for the constraint of treachery, nor does He await the thieving attack of the Jews, or the lawless judgment of Pilate, that their evil might be the fount and source of the general salvation of men. Of His own economy He anticipates their transgressions by means of a hierurgic rite, ineffable and unusual. He brings His own Self as an offering and sacrifice for us, being at once the Priest and the Lamb of God, that ‘taketh’ the sins of the world. By offering His Body as food, He clearly showed that the sacrificial offering of the Lamb had already been accomplished. For the sacrificial body would not have been suitable for food if it were still animated. And so, when He gave the disciples the Body to eat and the Blood to drink, then by free will and the power of the sacrament His Body had already ineffably and invisibly been offered in sacrifice, and His soul, together with the Divine power united with it, was in those places whither the power of Him who so ordained transported it."⁹⁹ In other words, the voluntary separation of the soul from the body, the sacramental agony, so to say, of the Incarnate, was, as it were, already begun. And the Blood, freely shed in the salvation of all, becomes a "medicine of incorruption," a medicine of immortality and life.¹⁰⁰
The Lord died on the Cross. This was a true death. Yet not wholly like ours, simply because this was the death of the Lord, the death of the Incarnate Word, death within the indivisible Hypostasis of the Word made man. And again, it was a voluntary death, since in the undefiled human nature, free from original sin, which was assumed by the Word in the Incarnation, there was no inherent necessity of death. And the free "taking up" by the Lord of the sin of the world did not constitute for Him any ultimate necessity to die. Death was accepted only by the desire of the redeeming Love. His death was not the "wages of sin."¹⁰¹ And the main point is that this was a death within the Hypostasis of the Word, the death of the "enhypostasized" humanity. Death in general is a separation, and in the death of the Lord His most precious body and soul were separated indeed. But the one hypostasis of the Word Incarnate was not divided, the "Hypostatic union" was not broken or destroyed. In other words, though separated in death, the soul and the body remained still united through the Divinity of the Word, from which neither was ever estranged. This does not alter the ontological character of death, but changes its meaning. This was an "incorrupt death," and therefore corruption and death were overcome in it, and in it begins the resurrection. The very death of the Incarnate reveals the resurrection of human nature. And the Cross is manifested to be life-giving, the new tree of life, "by which the lamentation of death has been consumed."¹⁰² The Church bears witness to this on Good Saturday with special emphasis. "Although Christ died as man, and His holy soul was separated from His most pure body," says St. John Damascene, "His Divinity remained both with the soul and the body, continued inseparable from either. And thus the one hypostasis was not divided into two hypostases, for from the beginning both body and soul had their being with the hypostasis of the Word. Although at the hour of death body and soul were separated from each other, yet each of them was preserved, having the one hypostasis of the Word.
Therefore the one hypostasis of the Word was also the hypostasis of the body and of the soul. For neither the body nor the soul ever received any proper hypostasis, other than that of the Word. The Hypostasis then of the Word is ever one, and there were never two hypostases of the Word. Accordingly the Hypostasis of Christ is ever one. And though the soul is separated from the body in space, yet they remain hypostatically united through the Word."¹⁰³
There are two aspects of the mystery of the Cross. It is at once a mystery of sorrow and a mystery of joy, a mystery of shame and of glory. It is a mystery of sorrow and mortal anguish, a mystery of desertion, of humiliation and shame. "Today the Master of Creation and the Lord of Glory is nailed upon the Cross, is beaten upon the shoulders, and receives spittings and wounds, indignities and bufferings in the face."¹⁰⁴ The God-man languishes and suffers at Gethsemane and on Calvary until the mystery of death is accomplished. Before Him are revealed all the hatred and blindness of the world, all the obstinacy and foolishness of evil, the coldness of hearts, all the helplessness and pettiness of the disciples, all the "righteousness" of human pseudo-freedom. And He covers everything with His all-forgiving, sorrowful, compassionate and co-suffering love, and prays for those who crucify Him, for verily they do not know what they are doing. "O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee?" (Micah 6:3) - paraphrased and applied to Our Lord in the Office of Good Friday, Matins, Antiphon XII, Troparion). The salvation of the world is accomplished in these sufferings and sorrows, "by His stripes we are healed (Is. 53:5). And the Church guards us against every docetic underestimate of the reality and fullness of these sufferings ίνα μη κενωθη ό σταυρός του Χρίστου" (I Cor. 1:17). Yet the Church guards us also against the opposite exaggeration, against all kenotic overemphasis. For the day of the shameful Crucifixion, when Our Lord was numbered among the thieves, is the day of glory. "Today we keep the feast, for Our Lord is nailed upon the Cross," in the sharp phrase of St. John Chrysostom.¹⁰⁵ And the tree of the Cross is an "ever-glorious tree," the very Tree of Life, "by which corruption is destroyed," "by which the lamentation of death is abolished." The Cross is the "seal of salvation," a sign of power and victory. Not just a symbol, but the very power of salvation, "the foundation of salvation," as Chrysostom says — ύπόθεσος της σωτηρίας. The Cross is the sign of the Kingdom. "I call Him King, because I see Him crucified, for it is appropriate for a King to die for His subjects." This again is St. John Chrysostom. The Church keeps the days of the Cross and cherishes them as solemnities — not only as a triumph of humility and love, but also as a victory of immortality and life. "As the life of the creation does the Church greet Thy Cross, Ο Lord."¹⁰⁶ For the death of Christ is itself the victory over death, the destruction of death, the abolition of mortality and corruption, "Thou diest and quickenest me." And the death of the Cross is a victory over death not only because it was followed or crowned by the Resurrection. The Resurrection only reveals and sets forth the victory achieved on the Cross. The Resurrection is accomplished in the very falling asleep of the God-man. And the power of the Resurrection is precisely the "power of the Cross," "the unconquerable and indestructible and Divine power of the honorable and life-giving Cross,"¹⁰⁷ the power of the voluntary Passion and death of the God-man. As St. Gregory of Nazianzus puts it: "He lays down His life, but He has power to take it again; and the veil is rent, for the mysterious doors of Heaven are opened; the rocks are cleft, the dead rise… He dies, but He gives life, and by His death destroys death. He is buried, but He rises again. He goes down into Hell, but He brings up the souls."¹⁰⁸ On the Cross the Lord "restores us to original blessedness," and "by the Cross comes joy to the whole world." On the Cross the Lord not only suffers and languishes, but rests, "having fallen asleep, as Thou wert dead."¹⁰⁹ And He gives rest to man too, restores and renews him, "and resting on the tree, Thou hast given me rest, one who was overburdened with the burden of sins." From the Cross Christ sheds immortality upon men. By his burial in the grave He opens the gates of death, and renews corrupted human nature. "Every action and every miracle of Christ are most divine and marvellous," says St. John Damascene, "but the most marvellous of all is His honorable Cross. For no other thing has subdued death, expiated the sin of the first parents, despoiled Hades, bestowed the resurrection, granted power to us of condemning death itself, prepared the return to original blessedness, opened the gates of Paradise, given our nature a seat at the right hand of God, and made us the children of God, save the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The death of Christ on the Cross clothed us with the hypostatic Wisdom and Power of God."¹¹⁰ The mystery of the resurrecting Cross is commemorated especially on Good Saturday. As it is explained in the Synaxarion of that day, "on Great and Holy Saturday do we celebrate the divine-bodily burial of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His descent into Hell, by which being called from corruption, our race passed to life eternal." This is not only the eve of salvation. It is the very day of our salvation. "This is the blessed Sabbath, this is the day of rest, whereon the Only Begotten Son of God has rested from all His deeds."¹¹¹ This is the day of the Descent into Hell. And the Descent into Hell is already the Resurrection.¹¹²
The great "three days of death" (triduum mortis) are the mysterious sacramental days of the Resurrection. In His flesh the Lord is resting in the grave, and His flesh is not abandoned by His Divinity. "Though Thy Temple was destroyed in the hour of the Passion, yet even then one was the Hypostasis of Thy Divinity and Thy flesh."¹¹³ The Lord’s flesh does not suffer corruption, it remains incorruptible even in death itself, i.e. alive, as though it had never died, for it abides in the very bosom of Life, in the Hypostasis of the Word. As it is phrased in one of the hymns, "Thou hast tasted of death, but hast not known corruption.¹¹⁴ St. John Damascene suggested that the word "corruption" (φθορά) has a double meaning. First, it means "all passive states of man" (τά πάθη) such as hunger, thirst, weariness, the nailing, death itself — that is, the separation of soul and body. In this sense we say that the Lord’s body was liable to corruption (φθαρτόν) until the Resurrection. But corruption also means the complete decomposition of the body and its destruction. This is corruption in the proper sense — or rather "destruction" (διαφθορά) — but the body of the Lord did not experience this mode of corruption at all, it remained even in death "incorrupt." That is to say, it never became a corpse.¹¹⁵ And in this incorruption the Body has been transfigured into a state of glory. The soul of Christ descends into Hell, also unseparated from the Divinity, "even in Hell in the soul, as God," — the "deified soul" of Christ, as St. John of Damascus suggests, ψυχή τεθεωμένη.¹¹⁶
This descent into Hell means first of all the entry or penetration into the realm of death, into the realm of mortality and corruption. And in this sense it is simply a synonym of death itself.¹¹⁷ It is hardly possible to identify that Hell, or Hades, or the "subterranean abodes" to which the Lord descended, with the "hell" of sufferings for the sinners and the wicked. In all its objective reality the hell of sufferings and torments is certainly a spiritual mode of existence, determined by the personal character of each soul. And it is not only something to come, but to a great extent is already constituted for an obstinate sinner by the very fact of his perversion and apostasy. The wicked are actually in hell, in darkness and desolation. In any case one cannot imagine that the souls of the unrepentant sinners, and the Prophets of the Old Dispensation, who spake by the Holy Spirit and preached the coming Messiah, and St. John the Baptist himself, were in the same "hell." Our Lord descended into the darkness of death. Hell, or Hades, is just the darkness and shadow of death, rather a place of mortal anguish than a place of penal torments, a dark "sheol," a place of hopeless disembodiment and disincarnation, which was only scantily and dimly fore-illuminated by the slanting rays of the not-yet-risen Sun, by the hope and expectation yet unfulfilled. Because of the Fall and Original Sin, all mankind fell into mortality and corruption. And even the highest righteousness under the Law could save man neither from the inevitability of empirical death, nor that helplessness and powerlessness beyond the grave, which depended upon the impossibility of a natural resurrection, upon the lack of power to restore the broken wholeness of human existence. That was, as it were, a kind of ontological infirmity of the soul, which, in the separation of death, had lost the faculty of being the true "entelechia" of its own body, the helplessness of fallen and wounded nature. And in this sense, all descended "into hell," into infernal darkness, as it were, into the very Kingdom of Satan, the prince of death and the spirit of negation; and they were all under his power, though the righteous ones did not partake of evil or demoniac perversion, since they were confined in death by the grip of ontological powerlessness, not because of their personal perversion. They were really the "spirits in prison."¹¹⁸ And it was into this prison, into this Hell, that the Lord and Savior descended. Amid the darkness of pale death shines the unquenchable light of Life, and Life Divine. This destroys Hell and destroys mortality. "Though Thou didst descend into the grave, Ο Merciful One, yet didst Thou destroy the power of Hell."¹¹⁹ In this sense Hell has been simply abolished, "and there is not one dead in the grave." For "he received earth, and yet met heaven." Death is overcome by Life. "When Thou didst descend into death, Ο Life Eternal, then Thou didst slay Hell by the flash of Thy Divinity."¹²⁰
The descent of Christ into Hell is the manifestation of Life amid the hopelessness of death, it is victory over death. And by no means is it the "taking upon" Himself by Christ of the "hellish torments of God-forsakenness."¹²¹ The Lord descended into Hell as the Victor, Christus Victor, as the Master of Life. He descended in His glory, not in humiliation, although through humiliation. But even death He assumed voluntarily and with authority. "It was not from any natural weakness of the Word that dwelt in it that the body had died, but in order that in it death might be done away by the power of the Savior," says St. Athanasius.¹²² The Lord descended into Hell to announce the good tidings and to preach to those souls who were held and imprisoned there (I Peter 3:19: έν ω και τοις έν φυλακή πνεύμασιν πορευθείς έκήρυξεν and 4:6: νεκροις εύηγγελίσθη), by the power of His appearance and preaching, to set them free, to show them their deliverance.¹²³ In other words, the descent into Hell is the resurrection of the "whole Adam." Since "Hell groans below" and "is afflicted," by His descent Christ "shatters the bonds eternal," and raises the whole human race.¹²⁴ He destroys death itself, "the hold of death is broken and the power of Satan is destroyed."¹²⁵ This is the triumph of the Resurrection. "And the iron gates didst Thou crush, and Thou didst lead us out of darkness and the shadow of death, and our chains didst Thou break."¹²⁶ "And Thou hast laid waste the abode of death by Thy death today and illuminated everything by Thy light of the Resurrection." Thus Death itself is transmuted into Resurrection. "I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen. And I have the keys of death and of Hades" (Rev. 1:17-18).