"Something strange is happening. There is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and a stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh. And He has raised up all who have fallen asleep ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh, and Hell trembles with fear."
Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus, Holy Saturday: The Lord Descends Into Hades, 403 AD
"Wonderful providence indeed which is so silent, yet so efficacious, so constant, so unerring. This is what baffles the power of Satan. He cannot discern the Hand of God in what goes on; and though he would fain meet it and encounter it, in his mad and blasphemous rebellion against heaven, he cannot find it."
John Henry Newman
And after all his endless schemes, to crush and betray and kill the Son of Man, when did the angel of darkness finally realize that in his schemes, that awful death upon that hill, he had achieved no victory but his own defeat, in the redemption of the world. And a great light and life had come at last to a fallen race, who had walked so long in blindness, in a darkened land.
What was his agony in understanding, this is our joy. And the angel was fallen, blinded by his pride, again.
