Christ Redifines Death and Razes Hell

(Leeloo here, I lifted this from Seb’s journal today. He’s reading a lot of Cardinal Cantalamessa this lent… from a collection of his Good Friday sermons down through the last four decades. He loves the icon posted below and has it in his prayer room.)

Jesus redefined death. When the enemy swallowed the bait and Christ razed hell, He metaphysically transformed death into a passageway, a birth canal to a new life untouchable by death. If we so choose, death can now be nothing more than a door into that cosmically shifted realm of the undying.

Jesus wept because so few would dare enter that cosmic passageway in, with and through him. All are invited yet few respond because of the distrust of God sewn by the enemy into the hearts of humanity. Christ forbids no one to follow him through the portal to life eternal. Most of us simply don’t dare trust him enough to do so… and that is why Jesus wept.

— Sebastian O’Donal - Lazarus Sunday, 2023