Day 7: Jesus visits hell

A queer version of Christ’s Passion is running in daily installments this week from Palm Sunday through Easter. Each daily post features a queer Christian painting and an excerpt from the novel Jesus in Love: At the Cross by Kittredge Cherry.


Whatever semi-disembodied state I was in, Satan was there, too. I was keenly aware of my body struggling against his. We were evenly matched in size and muscle. Judas’ corpse swung above us as we wrestled and punched each other. My lust for vengeance was an insatiable itch that made me want to scratch his eyes out and kill my enemy. I managed to pin Satan to the ground. He lay on his back with me on top, ready to strangle him. I wrapped my hands around his throat and squeezed. I was going to throttle the life out of Satan. That would stop him for good.

Just then he laughed with sheer delight. He wanted me to hit, hate, and kill him. He would never have come close enough to touch if he thought there would be any other outcome.

That ghastly laugh made me stop and remember who I was. Satisfying Satan horrified me. So did killing Satan, or killing anyone, even myself. In an extreme exercise of will, I relaxed my fist and stroked his leathery cheek and neck. Transcending myself like that required more strength than I thought I had.

Satan couldn’t help enjoying the touch. He turned his head and kissed my hand once shyly to let me know he wanted more. I caressed his invisible face again. He was hairy with a beard like mine. In fact, I noticed that his whole face was almost exactly like mine.

I found that I still had the power to whisper, “I forgive you, Brother. And I forgive myself.”

I broke the law of cause and effect that I myself had set up at creation, and a burst of energy was released. I was just as angry at Satan, but I gave him love anyway—something completely different from the worship that he had sought from me. My love was tough enough to withstand even the ongoing war between us. I reached a state of inner balance. If I was only human, I
would have been too weak to resist Satan, and yet without my humanity I would have lost, too, for my divine heart would not approach a sinner as vile as Satan. Loving in this way actually gave me more strength, although I found that I no longer needed to use it. Satan was resting peacefully beneath me.

“It is finished,” he announced.

I was confused. “Huh?”

“I release you. You win—this time.” He pushed me away.

The small amount of love that we exchanged was enough to topple his kingdom. I hurtled back toward the realm of solid light. I careened through a galaxy where the name of every human soul was spelled out in starlight, purging sin from human cellular memories as I went. The souls came untangled. In their newfound freedom, they looked to me like an omni-dimensional tapestry of stars shooting beams of energy, one to another. Each human soul chose to send its energy to every other soul, with the love between them lasting always.

In a flash, I comprehended a great truth: Once you love someone, that love lasts forever in the universe. Love never ends. Satan’s big lie was that hatred, fear, sin, and death can sometimes conquer love. No. Time makes them fade, while love endures forever. Love—love in any form whatsoever, any love that is ever loved—remains and is gradually filling the vast expanse of the universe.

(Continued here tomorrow)

Passio

by Gary Speziale

___
Gary Speziale is an openly gay New York artist whose art flows naturally from his full-bodied Roman Catholicism and who experiences life as one holy, homoerotic whole. He did the cover art for the “Jesus in Love” novels by Kittredge Cherry.

Day 7: Jesus visits hell

Passio

by Gary Speziale

A queer version of Christ’s Passion is running in daily installments this week from Palm Sunday through Easter. Each daily post features a queer Christian painting and an excerpt from the novel Jesus in Love: At the Cross by Kittredge Cherry. My cross seemed to grow taller. I was looking down on my enemies and friends at Golgotha from a greater height. Then I realized that I could see my own body nailed to one of the crosses below me…. I found myself in Gehenna, a scrubby desert valley just southwest of Jerusalem. People dumped and burned rubbish here. I had avoided this valley during my earthly lifetime because of its stink, its seemingly endless fires, and its frightening history. Some of my human ancestors had killed and burned their own children here as sacrifices on high altars built to foreign gods. The prophet Jeremiah warned that God would take such vengeance here that people would call the place “the Valley of the Slaughter.” But now my own Father had exiled me to Gehenna as a sacrifice. I sat down and considered my situation in the shade of an old acacia tree whose thick branches spread in a broad circle above my head. I seemed to be in the real earthly Gehenna, not any supernatural place. It was a spring afternoon exactly like the one on which I had died. The heat and smoke from Gehenna’s fires bothered me more than they normally would. I felt like I had a high fever, especially when I remembered all the times that I myself had warned people about Gehenna—which was also our name for the place where souls suffer after death. My words came back to haunt me: “If your right eye makes you sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It’s better to lose part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” The word I used for hell was “Gehenna.” I heard Satan’s noxious laugh twanging like an out-of-tune harp. As usual, he was invisible to me. Satan is actually boring, with all the interest generated by the host. I tried to meditate calmly and just be in Gehenna so Satan couldn’t hook me. When my mind began to wander, Satan spoke. “Welcome, Little Brother. I’m glad you’re here.” (Please come back tomorrow for the next daily installment in the Holy Week/Easter series at the Jesus in Love Blog.)