The Apostles Creed says that Christ descended into hell after Crucifixion. 

Why doesn't the Church emphasize that during Easter? It would seem that the pain associated with His death was very bad but, being under Satan's control for the time before the resurrection would be MUCH worse. Satan would make it as hard as he possibly could on Him. Or does the Church say that He was not under the control of Satan at the time? 

How could God be under Satan’s control at any time? Or is it related to the Trinity with three persons? He was under Satan’s control as one part of the Trinity, but God was not.

I am,

Curious and Confused

Golly! You bring up a whole lot of issues. Let's deal with them one at a time. 

The first thing I want to deal with is the issue of part of God suffering, or only the human Jesus suffering and not His divinity. We Catholics believe that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man. In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, humanity and divinity are married without possibility of divorce or even separation. 

There have been lots of groups over the years who have maintained that, since God is all powerful, He could not suffer. Therefore, in Jesus there must have been a divine Christ who abandoned the human Jesus at the moment of crucifixion. To these people, the Church has always said what she received, “No, Jesus, being God and Man, truly suffered and died and was raised on the third day”.  It was not just an illusion. 

To those people who say, “How could or why would an all powerful God experience suffering?” I would simply remind them that as they have already admitted, God is all powerful. He ca do what he wants. In other words, as I have often said, God has this problem: He thinks He’s God!  Most of what He does in our lives is done precisely to prove that point.  

Next, as for being under Satan’s control, I would hesitate to say it that way.

In the Mass we talk about a “death He freely accepted.”  Jesus said that He Himself laid down His life, no one took it from Him (Jn 10:18).  Jesus, the God Man, submitted Himself to Satan’s power, but was never under his control. His descent into hell makes that clear. The Harrowing of Hell.

We need to do some defining and clarifying as regards the phrase, “He descended into hell.” We say this in the Apostles' Creed and it is a very ancient idea. It goes right back to the very first days of our Church’s history. It probably is also referenced in the first letter of St. Peter, chapter 3, verses 18-20 St. Peter expands this idea. In the ancient world there was very little definition about the life after this world. Jesus clarified it, being the Lord of all life.

The ancients believed that perhaps there was a shadowy underworld that they called Hades, or later in the northern languages, Hell. This was not a place of eternal punishment, the just sentence for sin. It was more like our idea of Limbo. (No, we don’t have time to discuss that here!) St. Peter refers to the ancient Christian belief, that those who lived before the time of Noah, having no opportunity to enter into a covenant with God, waited for the Messiah who would offer them salvation. 

That is what Jesus was doing. Quite the opposite of being under Satan’s control, Jesus was exercising control over the underworld by offering freedom to those who had waited so long for His coming. 

Still, this puts off the larger issue. Jesus, both human and divine, placed Himself into the hands of sinful man, and I think it is not too much to say that they were definitely under the control of the devil. So, in some sense wasn't He under the devil’s power? How can this be?  

Well, our very idea of power is a bit devilish. So often when I  pray, I prove that I let the world, the flesh, and the devil define power for me. In the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, (Matt. 4:3) the devil says to Jesus “If you are who you claim to be, turn these stones into bread; show yourself to the people by a miracle of floating down  from the pinnacle of the temple; worship me (Satan) and have the kingdoms of the world under your control.”  

That's power! 

Unlimited resources, unlimited fame, unlimited political dominion!  When I pray, I want God to do for ME. After all, He can do anything. Why is He so stingy with the miracles?  

Perhaps I've told you this before, but I know a priest, the second rate pastor of a first rate parish, who tells this story (entirely too often). One hot summer day he was saying Mass and the fruit flies were hovering around the chalice. 

The priest said to the Lord, “I know that when you walked the roads of Galilee, you submitted to the laws of nature, and I know that even in the Blessed Sacrament you retain the form of bread and wine. Still I believe this great miracle of the Eucharist. I believe that this is no longer bread and wine, but has become Your precious Body and Blood. For one moment, couldn't you convince the fruit flies of this great miracle?”  

The still small voice that sometimes speaks in our hearts whispered in that priest’s heart that “when My hands were nailed to the cross, I was feast for the flies.” 

The priest could almost not continue with the Mass. He was frozen by the thought that the hands that set the earth and stars to spinning, the hands that shaped the galaxies, couldn't even lift themselves to swipe the flies from His sacred face! The All Powerful became powerless for our sake, for the sake of love.  

In that act, Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary defined power. 

For the devil and his followers, power is control. For Jesus, and his followers, power is love and trust.  When I pray I am usually not saying with Christ on His cross, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” I am saying, “If you are God give me what I want.” 

You see, when we think about power we show that we are the students of the devil, the of Holy Spirit wants to change an idea that we learned at our mothers’ knees going all the way back to Eve and her spineless husband Adam; that power is control. Jesus taught us from the Cross that God is Love, that power is Love and that His love is the greatest reality to which we can aspire, and sometimes love does involve a descent into hell.

Sincerely,

Rev. Know-It-All

PS Give my regards to Confused