Michael DOWNEY.  The Depth of God’s Reach: A Spirituality of Christ’s Descent.  Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2018.  Pp. xii + 131.  $ 22.00 pb.  ISBN 978-1-62698-261-1.  Reviewed by Benjamin J. BROWN, Lourdes University, Sylvania, OH 43560.

Michael Downey has been writing about Catholic spirituality for a long time.  In The Depth of God’s Reach he turns his attention to developing a spirituality for living in this hurting world by focusing on the brokenness and death of Jesus, embodied in the descent into hell and liturgically commemorated on Holy Saturday.  The book is a blend of theology and meditation, illustrated with a variety of stories and examples, almost like a collection of long sermons.  Downey writes with passion and power, aiming to move his audience, and he succeeds.

After setting the stage and touching on the highlights in the first two chapters, Downey presents his theological case for the meaning of Holy Saturday in the next three, and then uses the last three-fifths of the text discussing why it matters and what it means for our lives today.

Christ’s descent to the dead has been a part of many creeds and the Christian faith from very early.  In one way, it merely punctuates the full reality of Christ’s true death.  Secondly, in light of 1 Pt. 3, the descent indicates the extent of redemption, for it reaches down even to those who died before Christ.  Finally, and controversially, Downey, following Hans Urs von Balthasar, suggests that it indicates that Christ suffered the fate of sinners and truly experienced in a mysterious way separation from the Father.

One of the strengths of the book is that Downey, like von Balthasar, grounds the Incarnation and all of Christ’s life, including especially his death and descent, in the eternal kenosis of self-emptying love that God is.  The mysteries of salvation history bring into the world the eternal mystery of who God is – three persons existing in total self-giving love – and thus in turn bring the world into that total love.  Jesus’ entire life is characterized by kenosis, but the descent into hell is so important because in it is reached the fullness of that kenotic love in which He identifies with us and meets us at our lowest where we need it most.

In the last five chapters, Downey explains how important it is not to forget Holy Saturday amidst Easter preparations.  We need to let the weighty silence of that day hang over us, and we need to enter into its darkness.  Downey is concerned that rushing too quickly to Easter is not only theologically misguided, but also pastorally disastrous.  The consequences, he argues, are that people do not feel connected to Jesus, God seems distant, talk of God’s unconditional love falls flat, the tremendous suffering of the world is underappreciated, and Christian joy becomes rather blithe and naïve.

Taking Holy Saturday more seriously brings us into contact with suffering, death, despair, and all the horribleness of this world and is thus able to offer real hope to people.  It is profoundly comforting to know that Jesus, that God Himself, has walked in our shoes and continues to walk with us; He is not distant or unconcerned, but He has suffered with us, knows what it is like, and thus we can trust that He is also still here with us now in our spiritual, psychological, and physical suffering and dying.  And just as Christ had to endure and wait while the Father seemed to have abandoned Him, so, too, we can endure, for we have good reason to trust and hope in God, silent though He often seems to be.

All of this leads to a “spirituality of descent” that emphasizes particular attitudes, virtues, and activities.  We must be people of hope who meet the suffering of the world head on and then engage actively to accompany others, allow ourselves to be accompanied by others, and bring suffering to an end as far as we can, keeping our hope firmly placed in God.  Further, this is a spirituality from below; we must be humble, accepting our own faults and brokenness in order to grow onward and upward, starting again at the bottom over and over as needed; no one is beyond salvation, if only we will admit our own powerlessness and fall on the mercy of God in Christ.  Third, this spirituality is especially attuned to seeing God’s presence/grace in the horrors of the world, beginning with Jesus’ own crucifixion, which we too often take for granted.  Finally, we need to patiently endure hardships and become comfortable just bearing them, living in them in silence, pondering God’s grace in their midst, trusting God and hoping for the re-creative transformation that will come through suffering, often rather startlingly.

There is much to appreciate in Depth of God’s Reach.  It offers a sort of microcosm of salvation history that captures the whole through a particular lens.  Further, reading it is like a mini-retreat replete with insights.  However, it is weak theologically, especially through failing at times to hold in place certain tensions, the both-and that is a key element of good theology.  Downey’s particular accents sometimes become strong over-emphases, and in avoiding undue complexity, he is occasionally too simple and thus confusing and even misleading.

It is worth mentioning a few particulars.  In highlighting the importance of Holy Saturday, he practically sidelines the resurrection, even while covertly suffusing his explanations with resurrection language.  He wants Holy Saturday to be meaningful on its own, but of course, it is not; he is right to insist that Christ’s descent means that He accompanies us in our darkness and horrors, but that is not much comfort if He is not also leading us out of the dark and into the light.  Downey’s complaints about how blithe Christianity is about human suffering because we have focused too much on the resurrection are both theologically and historically incorrect.  While it is true that we have generally not given much attention to Holy Saturday, isolating it from Easter is not the solution.  The descent exists always in the embrace of Easter Sunday, as the whole New Testament testifies, and that is what has given the great saints and millions of others in the last 20 centuries the courage and compassion to enter into the margins to walk with and serve the poor and suffering.

Secondly, faith is unfortunately at times belittled in the attempt to promote the importance of hope.  Of course, we very much need both.  Lastly, Downey follows the path of those who reject God’s immutability because they think in too-creaturely terms and cannot see how to hold together both immutability and genuine love.  Rather, God is able to be present to us as the wholly other, loving us more deeply than we can fathom and being more intimate to us than we are to ourselves precisely because He utterly transcends the limits of His creation in His unchangeable perfection.

Despite these weaknesses, this is a worthwhile book as a reminder of some under-emphasized aspects of theology and especially for its insights into the spiritual life.  The latter is where Downey is most comfortable and where he shines.