In celebrating the Sacred Triduum, we can easily pass over the significance of Holy Saturday. We move from the pathos of Good Friday to the joy of the Easter Vigil on Saturday night, with just a few brief hours in between.
That small temporal gap, however, holds great importance.
Liturgically, in the Divine Office, Holy Saturday grapples with the disturbing fact that Jesus had died and was not yet risen.
We, of course, know how the Easter story goes, but for those first followers of Christ, the Resurrection of Jesus probably never even occurred to them as a possibility.
Awash with grief, the disciples must have been tempted to give in to hopelessness and despair.
What to honor
Holy Saturday bids us to honor the gaps, the transitions, those difficult and ambiguous moments, when everything we knew has ended, and what is emerging to become is not yet manifest.
A high school graduate discerning where to go to college or what vocation to embrace, a young person who breaks off a romantic relationship but has not found the right person yet, a Catholic believer who is experiencing a profound conversion but is still waiting on the Lord for direction, are all examples of individuals in those in-between periods of life.
I think of a wise farmer, who intentionally leaves some of his fields lying fallow for a season so that the soil can restore its nutrients and creativity.
Holy Saturday is the sacred time when the King is asleep, and yet, in that fallow time, something profound is stirring to life.
The Office of Readings for Holy Saturday contains an ancient homily which suggests that, even though God has fallen asleep in the flesh, He is also abundantly active.
“The Lord has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror . . . (Jesus replied . . . ) ‘I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.’”
I find this image of the Lord going to the underworld on Holy Saturday in order to proclaim the Resurrection and to set free all those who were held by sin and death since the Garden of Eden, profoundly moving and consoling.
God at work
Even when nothing seems to be happening on the surface of life, God is silently and secretly at work, bringing about the fruits of His victory over the forces of darkness.
Think of the period between the planting of the seed and the first sprout breaking through the soil.
Nothing different or active is visible to the eye, yet the seed is growing in the darkness, ready to burst into the light. The process just takes time.
In our world of instantaneous everything, we often have little patience for waiting, watching, keeping vigil, and quietly hoping.
If the results are not immediate and apparent, we want to give up or walk away.
Holy Saturday reminds us that the Lord is always working out our salvation, especially in those painful moments when the agony of our Good Fridays has not yet surrendered to the glory of our Easter consolations.
Can we wait in stillness? Can we live the secret mystery of the time when the King is seemingly asleep, but is actually roaming the depths of our underworlds of sin and death, and is bringing life and redemption out of the harsh clods of our defeat and uncertainty? Can we trust in the Lord even when nothing much seems to be happening? Holy Saturday has much to teach us.
As we celebrate the joy and wonder of Easter, I pray that all of us here in the Diocese of Madison experience anew the glory of the resurrection of Christ!
May each person know the love, peace, joy, and mercy which flow from the Heart of our Risen Savior.
As we embrace the call to go and make disciples and to set out into the deep with the Lord, I pray that we can trust Him in these in-between times when the seed has been planted, but we do not yet see the fruit.
This is the gracious moment when God is most abundantly at work within us and within the diocese.
A joyful and blessed Easter!