The Exorcist Files - What God The Father Saw When Christ Invaded Hell

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Father Martins finishes his reflection series on Christ's descent into Hell, from the Father's perspective.Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Rocketmoney.com/exfilesPlease display a clickable link in show notes ABOVE THE FOLD: “Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://trymiracle.com/EXFILES and use the code EXFILES to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF.”Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code EXFILES at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/EXFILESGo to shopremi.com/EXFILES and use code EXFILES  at checkout for 50% off with Remi Club Subscribe & SaveWatch the Born Again Identity HereSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Then after the seventh reading, when every eye in the building has long grown accustomed to the darkness, the gloria rings out, the bells erupt, and the church lights blaze on all at once. Darkness is swallowed whole and in an instant. What started as vigil now becomes Jubilee. And in that sudden overwhelming flash, the church reenacts, however imperfectly, the world-altering shock of the resurrection itself. Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, the show of theological meat and such a spiritual treat. I'm your co-host, Ryan Bithay. Today, Father Martins continues his meditation series on Christ descent into hell. If you've not heard the others, please do go back and listen to them. They're fantastic.

We are in the midst of recording Season 3, and we're very excited. We'll be releasing little teasers as to the case files and their contents in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for that. We hope to have the season for you very, very soon. Also, did you check out our new series with Father Gregory Pine on finding your identity in Christ? Are you wondering what to do with your life, who you are, what to do about it? Well, we can help with some of this. Just click the link in the show notes. The first two episodes are available now on EWTM Plus and the third drops in just a day.

So check out the born again identity with Father Gregory Pine and myself on EWTM Plus or just click the link in the show notes. And with that, let's bring on Father Martins. Well, friends, we have reached our third and final post-easter meditation on Christ's descent into hell. In the first episode, I offered a reflection on his descent from the perspective of Christ himself and what he might have experienced. And the second, I offered a meditation on what the demons experienced upon Christ's entrance into hell. In this third and final meditation, I'm offering the descent from the perspective of God the Father. Christ's descent into hell is perhaps the most easily overlooked moment in the entire pastical mystery. Good Friday confronts us with violence. Easter Sunday overwhelms us with

triumph. But Holy Saturday is silence. The Son of God lies motionless in the tomb. The apostles hide behind lock doors. Heaven itself appears quiet. Salvation seems suspended between promise and fulfillment. The visible drama of salvation appears to have come to a standstill. The church prepares us for the resurrection in her Lenton liturgical practices. During the Lenton season, the church undergoes a liturgical dying. She doesn't only remember death. She undergoes it.

Across 40 days, aspects of the church begin to lessen, dim, weaken, and disappear. The liturgy itself enters a kind of dying. Joy recedes, beauty is stripped away, sound diminishes. Celebration withdraws. The church slowly enters the passion of Christ, not only through memory, but through participation. The most obvious way the church does this is through fasting and abstinence. Fasting weakens the body and our craving bellies become a constant reminder of our mortality. That is, a constant reminder of Adam's sin.

It is a kind of controlled diminishment of the self, a voluntary lessening of life, and when undertaken seriously, it isn't easy. There is something uncanny about fasting. The moment one freely surrenders something, one seems to desire it all the more. No wonder the Italians say, La Coresse me a long. Lent is long. The church withdraws from joy and glory, expressed by atonelship. from celebration to penitence.

The Alleluia disappears, and Christian praise feels its absence, for no word is more central to Christian worship, and no absence is more keenly felt. Gone too is the Gloria, that glorious hymn of exultation, which normally breaks forth with splendor at every Sunday Mass.

Music becomes simplified, as the human voice, rather than the usual use of musical instruments, takes center stage. The church's rubrics do not forbid instruments, but it allows their use only insofar as they support the human voice of the choir, which is restrained and shorn of any festive character. The effect is that the liturgy grows quieter, more somber,

and the church is prevented from giving full voice to her joy. The church's eyesight lessons, expressed by her removal of beauty. All flowers are removed, altars and spaces are left bare and unadorned. But as the season progresses, more visuals are removed. Beginning on the 5th Sunday of Lent, the Sunday before Palm Sunday, churches cover their statues, artwork, and crosses with veils. Then comes Holy Week, when her liturgical dying intensifies. Deceivingly, Holy Week's first two liturgical events can make one think all as well.

On Palm Sunday, a great sign of life appears. The church waves palms in triumph. And on Holy Thursday the Gloria, which has not been heard since Lent began, makes a sudden, jubilant return, and the sanctuary bells ring throughout its recitation. Those who worked among the dying may recognize this phenomenon immediately. Hospice nurses even have a name for it, the rally before death, a sudden return of energy, a brief resurgence of clarity, one last birth of life before the final sleep. In fact, the altar is stripped of its cloths and candles and left bare.

The holy water is also removed from the fonts at the church entrances. As the priest exits, carrying the Blessed Sacrament, the church appears empty and lifeless. On Good Friday, the church's soulless appearance is intensified. As worshippers enter the church, they face something dreadful. The church has no mass to offer. She cannot offer the divine sacrifice because with Christ she has succumbed to death. As if distributing an inheritance, that of her final belongings, the priest can do no more than distribute the leftover sacrament consecrated the day before.

On Holy Saturday, the church experiences the entombment and decay of death. While yesterday there was no Mass, today there is not even Holy Communion. The church building remains closed until late evening. But as worshippers file in, they are greeted by complete darkness. Every light in the building extinguished save for one. The feeble light offered by the pascal candle. They enter carrying their own candles, reminiscent of the women in the gospel who made their way to the Lord's tomb before sunrise,

carrying lanterns against the dark, not yet knowing what they would find. But shortly after, arriving at their pews the order is given. Extinguish your candles. Even that light is snuffed. The effect is somber. The church, together with her congregation, has entered the tomb with Jesus,

and her burial is now complete. She is no longer dying. She has succumbed to liturgical death and is buried. Worshippers sit in a hauntingly darken church, illuminated only by the seemingly frail light cast by the pascal candle. They hear reading after reading drawn from across the sweep of salvation history, from creation to the prophets, each one tracing the long arc of God's faithfulness

towards this very night. Then after the seventh reading, when every eye in the building has long grown accustomed to the darkness, the Gloria rings out, the bells erupt, and the church lights blaze on all at once. Darkness is swallowed whole and in an instant. What started as vigil now becomes Jubilee. And in that sudden overwhelming flash, the church reenacts, however imperfectly, the world-altering shock of the resurrection itself. But before we can fully receive what that moment means, before we can understand what the resurrection actually accomplished, we must go back to the moment when the Son of God gave up his life on the cross and descended into hell. The experience of God the Father.

As human beings, we cannot help but experience reality according to the limits of our humanity. Philosophically, this fact has given rise to a foundational principle. Something is received according to the mode of the receiver. In other words, everything we encounter, joy, sorrow, truth, even God himself, we necessarily receive and process through the lens of our humanity. Consider what this means in practice. When we suffer, we do not experience pain as a mere biological signaling, firing through nerves.

We experience it as anguish, as burden, sometimes even as something that seems to touch the very meaning of our lives. When we love, it does not merely register as a chemical reaction in the brain. We experience it as self-gift, attachment, longing, sacrifice, perhaps even pain. Even in something as simple as hunger, we do not merely detect a drop in blood sugar. We feel the desire for food, the impatience, the desire to be filled. Everything we encounter we receive as humans. And so when we turn the lens of our humanity toward the passion and

crucifixion of Jesus. It may prompt us to make one of two astounding statements. As bloody and grueling as the crucifixion was, one person perhaps suffered even more than Jesus. God the Father, who had to watch his son endure his agony and passion. Or, it's opposite. More guilty than Pontius Pilate, the Jews, the soldiers, and even Satan, who caused Adam to fall, was God the Father, who could have intervened to say. save his son and did not. A long time ago, a wise person once told me that to be faithful in great matters, you must be faithful in little. And you know what? It's true. I've seen time and time again God meet me when I decide to do the small things right. And finances, they're a big part

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crowned with thorns, scourged, stripped, nailed, mocked, and killed. Because from our human perspective, there is something uniquely agonizing about watching someone you love suffer. To us, to humans, that feels unbearable. We instinctively think, to suffer is terrible, but to watch the one you love suffer is even worse. Any parent watching a child writhe and terrible suffering will tell you, I'd gladly trade places with him. But here is where our human lens reaches its limit and must be purified. And this is the key. If we are going to understand and not misconstrue God the Father's place on Holy Saturday, we must understand his place on Good Friday.

First of all, it is impossible for God to suffer. Why? Because of what suffering is and what divinity is. Suffering is always something outside of us, taking something away from us, something external, disrupts and diminishes us, preventing us from fulfillment. But God, by definition, is the supreme being. Nothing can be taken away from him that would make him less than what he is, just as nothing can be added to him that would make him more than what he is. God is unchangeable, not because he is inert or static like a rock, but for the opposite reason. He is so dynamic, so active, so full of divinity, that no change can make him better or worse than what he is. For God to suffer would mean something outside of him is bigger than he is, which is impossible.

If it were somehow possible, God would cease to be God. So what is happening within God the Father as his son endures his passion and death? One thing that is for sure not happening, he is not suffering. yet it also does not mean the father is distant cold or emotionally indifferent to the suffering of his son. And from this, we derive the answer to the second statement. Because the father is God, he is filled with compassion, not just for the son, but for all men. At Calvary, the father beholds every wound, humiliation, abandonment, and agony endured by Jesus Christ, with infinite compassion. But divine compassion is not an emotional instability or pain forced upon God from outside himself.

It is God's perfect and unwavering willing of the good in the face of suffering and evil. The Father's compassion is therefore revealed precisely in his unceasing love for his son, his absolute opposition to sin and death, and his steadfast desire to save humanity through the son's self-office. suffering. God is perfectly compassionate, not because he is wounded by suffering, but because his love fully and freely embraces those who suffer. Compassion does not require helplessness or being hurt by another's pain. It requires total self-giving presence to the beloved, and this God both possesses and offers infinitely. Thus, the event of the cross is not the Father turning away from

the Son, nor the Son suffering alone while the Father passively watches. It is the supreme revelation of Trinitarian love within history, the Father giving, the Son offering, and the Holy Spirit uniting that eternal exchange of love for the salvation of the world. In this sense, God's compassion is deeper than creaturely suffering, because it is a love so perfect that nothing, not even the horror of Calvary can weaken, overwhelm, or deflect it from its goal. The redemption of humanity. You see, God does not have just one desire on Good Friday. He has three. To love his son unceasingly. To oppose sin and death, the effects of the fall, absolutely. And to save humanity through the son's self-offering. The passion of God the Son is,

is the ultimate expression of one divine will, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acting in perfect unity for the salvation of the world. And the scriptures prove this. Quote, Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, end quote. Ephesians 5 verse 2. And quote, God so loved the world

that he gave his only son, end quote. John 316. The father's giving of the son and the self-offering of the son are not two competing realities. They are one single act of divine love seen from two sides. So what then are we sensing when we are tempted to believe that the father must have suffered more than the son? We are sensing imperfectly, but truly, the immensity of divine love. because the father does not lose the son on the cross he gives him freely completely without reserve

and the son does not have his life taken from him quote i lay it down of my own accord end quote john 10 verse 18 the cross then is not a tragedy imposed on god it is the very expression of who god is total self-gift on the part of the son, total compassion on the part of the father. Prophet Isaiah says something so terrifying that Christians instinctively recoil from it.

Quote, but the Lord was pleased to crush him, end quote. Isaiah 53, verse 10. At first hearing, the sentence sounds monstrous. It can scandalize us because it can make us believe the father is simply cruel. On the contrary, it does not mean the father delights in suffering or takes pleasure in the son's pain. It means that he wills fully and without reservation the sacrifice of his son in order that you and I be redeemed, in order that sin and death be defeated. The church fathers understood this statement from Isaiah not as a divine cruelty, but as the most radical expression of divine love.

A love willing to go all the way. a love willing to go further that we can ever imagine. God can do this because he is incapable of suffering. Thus, he is free to offer a compassion that is infinite. So we must finally say, the son alone suffers, but only in his humanity. And his suffering is beyond all comparison. But the father is not distant from that suffering. While he does not physically suffer the passion,

he is filled with compassion. He is present to it, not as one overwhelmed, but as one who loves perfectly, and whose love is so complete that he holds nothing back, not even his own son, who, for his part, offers himself in total obedience to the Father. And in that light, our first instincts,

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The parables. Love that doesn't make sense. The love of God the Father is meant to be powerfully unsettling. In fact, Jesus hammers this home in Chapter 15 of Luke's gospel. He tells us three parables in a row. The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, each one escalating the same outrageous claim about divine love. The law sheep, Luke 15 verses 4 to 7. The shepherd leaves 99 sheep in order to go after the one that has wandered off. Ancient Israel was a shepherding culture, and if you had asked an ancient Jew whether a shepherd would do this, they would have laughed. Sheep can't help but wonder. What brings them back is hearing the voice of the shepherd. But if a sheep wanders so far that it no longer hears his voice, it simply keeps going, usually in the same direction that caused it to get lost in the first place. It becomes a sitting duck for any wolf that finds it.

And if the shepherd abandons the 99 to go after it, they too are left exposed and he risks greater loss. From a purely practical standpoint, it makes no sense. 99 are safe. One is lost. You protect the majority. You accept the loss. But Christ is saying, the father doesn't think that way. For him, the lost one is not expendable. He searches until he finds it.

The lost coin, Luke 15 verses 8 to 10. The woman overturns her house to find a single coin, a denarius, a full day's wage worth perhaps $70 to $100 in our terms. When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together to sell. celebrate. She throws a party. And here is the irony. She certainly spends more on the feast than the coin itself was worth. Kind of sounds cookie, huh? Then the prodigal son, verses 11 to 32. The son doesn't merely wander. He rejects his father entirely, demanding his inheritance early, which in that culture was tantamount to saying, I wish you were dead. He squanders everything and returns with nothing to offer but a rehearsed apology. And the father? He does not wait for explanations. He does not demand repayment. He does not even let the son finish his speech. He runs. He embraces. He restores him completely. Robe, ring, and sandals. And then he throws a feast. It feels excessive, even outrageous and unjust. The older brother, certainly think so. But what Jesus is revealing is this. God will stop at nothing to recover a lost soul.

The parable is known as the prodigal son, but it is misnamed. A prodigal is someone who is wastefully extravagant, recklessly lavish. Jesus reveals that it is not the son who does this, but the father. The father is the true prodigal. All three parables reveal that the father's love does not operate by human logic. It does not measure worth the way we do. It is willing to risk, to search, to rejoice, disproportionately. To us, it seems not grounded in efficiency, fairness, or proportionality, but is reckless, excessive, and, well, crazy. Crazy love is not just a Van Morrison song. It is the kind of love that God their father has for you. And Jesus tells us why.

There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. This is the key. God's love is not restrained by what is reasonable. It is personal. It's relentless. And it's extravagant. Which means this. When we look at these parables and think, that's too much.

That's over the top. That doesn't make sense. We are finally beginning to understand the Father. And so back to Good Friday. It is this father, reckless in love, unwilling to abandon even one sheep, giving his son without reservation, who stands behind the silence of Holy Saturday. To be clear, he stands behind the silence, but not apart from it. As each church congregation enters the tomb on Holy Saturday, the father is there too.

And it is to him that the ancient Easter proclamation, the exultat, is addressed. Within that hymn, proclaimed through every Catholic church in the world on that night, the canter cries out, O wonder of your humble care for us, O love, oh charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave, you gave away your son. This is the logic of God the Father, and it is precisely this logic, extravagant, relentless, unwilling to write off a single soul, that unlocks what Christ actually does on Holy Saturday, whom the Father willed to descend into hell. He entered the realm of the dead, not as a prisoner, but as a shepherd.

Consider what this means against the backdrop of the three parables. The shepherd left the 99 and searched until he found the one. The woman overturned her house until she found the coin. The father ran down the road before his son could finish his rehearsed speech. And now the Son of God, sent by the Father, who is driven by reckless love, descends into the very furthest realm of lostness, into the place where all the righteous dead had accumulated since the world began, to bring them home. The descent into hell is not a footnote to the Pascole mystery. It is the Father's love, pressed to its final and most radical.

extreme. It is the radical love of an illogical God. Every congregation that has ever entered into a darkened church on Holy Saturday during the Easter vigil has been, without fully knowing it, enacting something real. The church in her liturgical dying has not been performing a drama. She has been entering a mystery, the mystery of a love that goes all the way down, a love that refuses to leave anyone to death, a love that harrows hell of the righteous, rather than abandon a single one to it. When the glory rings out, when the bells erupt,

when the lights blaze on, that sudden, overwhelming flash is not merely theatrical. It is the moment the church emerges from the tomb with the one who descended into it. She has died with him. She has lain in silence with him. And now she rises with him, into the light of the Father's love, which was never absent, never diminished, and never, for even a single moment, held back.

The exultate tells us what we are celebrating when that light breaks. O wonder of your humble care for us, O love, oh charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your son. This is the logic of God the Father. A love that raises the dead sons and daughters of God. A love that in the end, no tomb, however dark, however sealed, however silent, can contain. God bless you all, friends.