A harrowing night at the theater.

Before you read any further, I must warn you. This is a story about a mystery play, one of a whole cycle of mystery plays originally put on at England's York Cathedral around the year 1400. Not everybody's cup of tea.

This particular play is called "The Harrowing of Hell." Its cast of characters includes Beelzebub, Satan, and Lucifer. It is about Adam and Eve, Saint Michael the Archangel, and Jesus. The play is set between the time Jesus died on Good Friday and his rising from the dead on the third day.

I attended the play on May 1, 1994 at St. Nicholas Church in Evanston, Illinois, where, right before my eyes, Jesus' descent into hell happened all over again, as if for the first time.

There is nothing pretentious about mystery plays. They are very simple - at the same time serious and playful. It is not long before you forget where you are. There is something timeless about mystery plays. They draw you into the action and make you one of the participants. That is what happened to me during "The Harrowing of Hell."

A little boy helped.

I was watching closely, one eye on "The Harrowing of Hell" up front in the sanctuary, and one eye on this little fellow a few pews ahead of me. He could not have been more than 2.

The boy was all eyes. I was distracted. "What does a little child see?", I wondered. "What does a child understand about evil and deliverance from evil from the safety of his father's arms?"

Mystery plays make virtues and qualities into players, in this case four daughters of God dancing in front of Jesus' tomb, fresh from William Langland's powerful medieval story Piers Plowman.

The world was different in 1400. In those days the welcoming committee - the greeters - at the door of the cathedral were biblical kings and prophets, apostles and evangelists, standing in stone to this day, very solemn in their niche.

Printing had not yet been invented then. Instead of reading about Jesus and the gospels, people listened to their stories admired them in stained glass, and experienced them in plays - popular dramatic presentations put on in cathedrals and churches to bring Jesus and the gospels to life.

But mystery plays have long gone silent, replaced by books, for the most part. It is wonderful when the old stories once again become flesh, alive and full of contemporary imagination.

The play was nearing the end. The daughters of God had been debating the fate of Adam and Eve - Truth challenging Mercy, Righteousness against Peace. The debate was over and they were dancing in harmony, celebrating the happy outcome of their debate.

There was no mistaking the daughters of God, with Truth in green, "a wondrous woman" and fearless; Mercy in pink, "mild and comely, beautiful in bearing and benign in speech"; Righteousness in blue, upholding God's judgment "in the beginning"; and Peace in white, richly "clothed in patience."

God's daughters were very beautiful, dancing in a circle, stepping lightly, in and out, in and out, around and around - figures from a Gothic portal come to life once everyone has gone and night envelops the cathedral.

Jesus takes center stage

Hidden in part by God's four graceful daughters, Jesus lay covered by a white cloth, like an altar cloth, on a long bench at the foot of the altar.

It was time for the Resurrection. You could tell because the lights were growing dimmer.

Then the white cloth slipped away, pulled to the floor by hidden fingers.

And Jesus rose noiselessly, without fanfare. You could barely make him out as he disappeared.

The church was filled with very adult stillness, too much for a little child.

"Uh-oh!" And the silence was broken.

I was so taken up with the Resurrection, I had forgotten the little boy in his father's arms.

Did the child know about the Resurrection? Did he understand? There are all kinds of understanding, not just degrees. There is a kind of understanding that comes from being attuned to something or someone, from participating in someone's very being and life. I wonder how it is with children and understanding. I wish I could remember.

That little child's "Uh-oh!" was the climax of St. Nicholas' May Festival of the Arts.

That is not the way it was planned - a lot of things are not planned in a medieval mystery play. But what a climax!

The main event - what the play is really about - is when Jesus descended into hell, accompanied by Saint Michael the Archangel and a joyous company of children singing Jubilate Deo - "Sing Joyfully to God." It is then that Jesus broke the gates of hell. Those gates had been shut tight from the days of Lucifer's fall and Adam and Eve. You could get in, but you could not get out.

Satan, Beelzebub, and Lucifer tried to resist. Their whole mission in life was at stake. They had to prevent Jesus from breaking the gates of hell. But Satan, Beelzebub, and Lucifer were no match for Saint Michael the Archangel, who drove all three, together with their screaming minions, out of the sanctuary down the center aisle and into the outer darkness at the back of the church.

Then and there I promised never again to sit at the back of the church, even if I came early, even at the risk of people taking me for a Protestant.

Speak of the devil

Satan was quite something in his flaming-red union suit, trident in hand, a bit puckish - like Mickey Rooney in "A Mid-Summer Night's Dream." Beelzebub, in black, a little leather, and chains, reminded me of Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider" 30 years later, now rather chunky like a middle-aged Hell's Angel. And Lucifer? Very smart in his white suit and brimmed hat, a dead ringer for Truman Capote, studiedly relaxed, very confident as the voice of reason, not to mention his way with words.

But the one who nearly stole the show was Saint Michael the Archangel.

Saint Michael was a girl! I bet you did not see that in a 15th-century English cathedral. Besides, if angels are pure spirits, so are archangels. So why does Michael have to be a boy? Just because Christians in ancient Rome dressed him up as a centurion and 17th-century Christians in Japan made him into a samurai, why couldn't Saint Michael be a girl?

You should have seen Adam and Eve. They were so young, the way I long imagined them. Over the years I have grown quite fond of Adam and Eve. I really do not know what I would do without them. It would be like losing part of myself, my inner being.

It was not always like that, though I have known Adam and Eve as long as I can remember.

At first I took them for granted, certain they would always be there for me. Then - they time is hard to pinpoint, but it was sometime in my teens - I all but forgot about them. Looking after myself was already a lot to manage. With all those new feelings and everything - studying Homer and Virgil, swept away by Renata Tebaldi singing from "La Traviata," looking for my place in the world - I could not get very excited about a piece of fruit on a tree. The garden in Eden, wherever it was, was very far away.

Adam and Eve came back into my life when I started studying theology, but only briefly. After trying to track them down with the help of a few learned commentaries, I concluded Adam and Eve were not real.

But that is a long time ago. I have no idea how it happened, but at some point Adam and Eve reentered my life. Today, I meet them just about everywhere, still trying to be like gods and grasping for immortality, right here on earth. Some call it original sin.

Adam and Eve are historical all right, like you and I are historical, and their history is really fascinating with all its ups and downs. Besides, it is not over yet.

We became friends when I took Adam and Eve by surprise deep within myself. I really resented them intruding like that. Just because they were put out of their garden does not mean they could take over mine. But they would not go away. Little by little I realized we were in this together, and I would have to make the best of it.

And that is how Adam and Eve and I became friends. They had been there all along.

To hell and back

Adam and Eve were the reason Jesus descended into hell - Hades for ancient Greeks and Romans, Sheol for the Hebrews. They were also responsible for the mess that made Jesus' descent there necessary.

You should have seen young Adam and Eve at St. Nicholas when Jesus extended a hand to them and pulled them from the depths, along with a great number of poor souls. I could feel myself being drawn up from the inside. You should have seen them when Michael led them into paradise.

It was great welcoming Jesus into the depths of myself, seeing him break down the doors of hell, take my Adam and Eve by the hand, and raise them to life.

Images - icons from Greece and paintings from Ethiopia - come to mind, powerful images of Jesus reaching out to Adam and Eve and raising them to life with the wonderful concern of one who loved life so much he gave his life for them.

A line from the Creed also comes to mind: "He descended into hell." I always wondered where Jesus went. Now I know. I even know why.

The stuff of a good nightmare

We all have images of hell, even if we do not call them that. Perhaps it is falling into a bottomless pit, drowning in ugly slime, or being enveloped by unquenchable fire, like the New Testament's "eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41), the stuff of a good nightmare. Perhaps it is being locked in frozen stillness, like the traitors Judas Iscariot, Cassius, and Brutus in the last canto of Dante's Inferno.

In every case hell is being all alone, isolated, cut off from memory and loving relationships, alone in deep darkness, grasping to be God, trying to fashion Adam and Eve after our own image and likeness.

I do not have far to look for hell. When Jesus descended into hell that night at St. Nicholas he descended in the depths of my being, broke the gates of my isolation, reclaimed Adam and Eve for God, and raised them to a place of light and life where old friends become eternal friends.

As Saint Michael took over, Jesus had nothing more to do, so he returned to the tomb and waited for the Resurrection while the daughters of God danced in quiet celebration, barely holding back their Easter Alleluia.

We knew it was coming. No matter. Jesus' rising took everybody by surprise, as did the little child's "Uh-oh." Even Jesus was surprised.

Uh-oh! Watch out, Satan! Did you hear, Beelzebub? It is all over, Lucifer! Hooray for Jesus! Hooray for Saint Michael the Archangel! Hooray for Adam and Eve! Hooray for us!

People in the Middle Ages knew a whole lot about Adam and Eve and about Jesus' descent into hell, like little children of every age. Sometimes I envy them. Uh-oh!