Love stronger than death.

In the Indian legend of Savithri, Satyavan comes and lies down, in the lap of his bride Savithri. He becomes in a way, like her child. The iconography of this figure, which relates to many folk images showing a mother figure with a dead child in her lap, reminds us of the Pieta. There, as in the famous figure of the Pieta carved by Michaelangelo, we see the Mother Mary looking almost as young as a bride of the Christ, taken down from the tree of the Cross. The figure of Mother and Bride are here interfused, for as the Bhakti poets mention, love can be like the love of the Mother for her child, or the Bride for her husband. It is this love that is stronger than death.

“He reached from on high, he took me. He drew me out of the mighty waters” II Sam 22: 17. Ps. 18: 16
In the book of Jonah, the prophet goes down to the depths: “At the mountain bases I descened into Earth, and her bars closed on me forever. But you brought up my life from the Pit, Yahweh my God” Jonah 2: 5-6
In the letter to the Romans, Paul lists Death as foremost among those forces that are powerless to separate the soul from the Love of God in Christ. Rom. 8: 38