From Hades to Paradise

About Bishop St. Theophane the Recluse

About "old" and "new" calendar

April 21 (May 4)

Rom. 6:3-11, Mt. 28:1-20

The Lord’s is asleep in His tomb with His body, while with His soul has descended into Hades to proclaim salvations to the souls who were there. All the saints of the Old Testament time were not in Paradise, even though they had consolation in their faith of entering it sometimes in the future, when the Promised One, in whom they believed, would come to the earth. St. John the Baptist had proclaimed His coming to them as well.

And when the Lord descended into Hades, all the faithful cleaved to Him, and He led them into Paradise. But even this is just an entrance to the real Paradise which will open later, after the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment. Likewise, the saints of the New Testament time are in a blissful state here, though awaiting an even more perfect bliss in the age to come, when “new heavens and a new earth"' are created, [Is. 65:17], and "God will be all in а1Г [1 Cor. 15:28].

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