Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen. Continuing on our theme of the death and resurrection of Christ we will continue to look at poetry that explains to us what it is that Christ did through his death and Resurrection. The following is hymn 52 which serves as a dialogue between death and Satan!
Hymns 52-68 present a collection of dramatic dialogues in verse between Satan and Death, interspersed with the poet’s remarks. Satan and Death, who have “never prevailed and will never prevail,” argue with each other about which side the victory is on. In the course of this argument Satan and Death do no more than prove their helplessness in the face of God; they talk about Christ’s death on the cross as the source of their own torment and defeat. Each stanza is accompanied by a refrain that bears the central message: “Praise to you, O Son of the Shepherd of all, who has saved his flock from the hidden wolves, the Evil One and Death, whom he has swallowed up," “Praise to you, who has prevailed over the Evil One and through your resurrection has triumphed over Death.” In a condensed form the refrains contain the principal theological idea, which the reader would otherwise have to derive from the dialogues between Satan and Death. This particular way of presenting the material serves a didactic purpose and enables the reader to grasp the core idea of the poem in greater depth. The dialogue between Death and Satan in Hymn 52 demonstrates this.
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I heard Death and Satan loudly disputing which was the stronger of the two amongst men.
Death has shown his power in that he conquers all men, Satan has shown his guile in that he makes all men sin.
Death: “Only those who want to, O Evil One, listen to you, but to me they come, whether they will or not.”
Satan: “You just employ brute force, O Death, whereas I use traps and cunning snares.”
Death: “Listen, Evil One, a cunning man can break your yoke, but there is none who can escape from mine.”
Satan: “You, O Death, exercise your strength on the sick, but I am the stronger with those who are well...”
Satan: “Sheol is hated for there is no chance of remorse there: it is a pit which swallows up and suppresses every impulse.”
Death: “Sheol is a whirlpool, and everyone who falls in it is resurrected, but sin is hated because it cuts off a man’s hope.”
Satan: “Although it grieves me, I allow for repentance; you cut off a sinner’s hopes if he dies in his sins.”
Death: “With you his hope was cut off long ago; if you had never made him sin, he would have made a good end.”
Chorus: “Blessed is he who set the accursed slaves against each other so that w e can laugh at them just as they laughed at us.”
Our laughing at them now, my brethren, is a pledge that we shall again be enabled to laugh, at the resurrection.
The following hymn is found in Metropolitan Hilarion, Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox Perspective, 126-128.
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