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The narrative of Christ's descent was nearly omnipresent in the early Church. Yet a change of Latin vocabulary from "descensus ad inferos" (Christ's descent to the dead) to "descensus ad inferna" (Christ's descent into hell) prompted a change in what was proclaimed. The earlier stratum portrayed Christ preaching to those who, while on earth, did not hear the word of God, while the latter described the reconciliation of sinners. The author here considers the vitality of this creedal statement and what is lost when the descent is absent from Christian experience.] U NIVERSAL HUMAN EXPERIENCES are few. We have all been conceived and born. We eat, we sleep-to varying degrees. For Christians the universal experiences include several more. We have been knitted together by the sacraments of initiation, bathed at the font and anointed, gathered on Sundays to be offered bread and wine in the Eucharist. The teaching and preaching of the Church in the United States attend to these, but about death, the last common experience, the Church in this culture offers too little direction and formation. Like Jesus of Nazareth himself, all Christians die. Every human life will end, no matter what its degree of holiness or frequency of church attendance.The Christian faith once proclaimed more widely a tenet that was a consolation to believers as they anticipated their inevitable deaths: Christ's descent to the dead. Some might remember the creedal statement "he descended into hell" as part of the Apostles' Creed, yet because the Nicene Creed is prescribed for Sunday Eucharist today, 1 remembrance and appre-MARTIN CONNELL received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame.

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