On Holy Saturday the Church waits at the Lord’s tomb, meditating on His suffering and death.Mantegna’s painting is a compelling image, confronting us with the reality of Jesus’ death…
On this day, Holy Saturday, the altar is left bare and Mass is not celebrated.
Only after the solemn vigil during the night, held in anticipation of the resurrection, does the Easter celebration begin with a spirit of joy that overflows into an Easter season of fifty days.
Writing in the fourth century, St Epiphanius of Salamis offers us his beautiful appreciation of Holy Saturday. What he describes here is what we mean when we say of Christ in the Apostles Creed:
He suffered, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell;
the third day he rose again from the dead.
Upon his death, Christ went to the nether world to set free the souls of all who had died awaiting his victory over death – beginning with our first parents…
Something strange is happening—
there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and 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 has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began.
God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
He 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 and cried out to everyone:
“My Lord be with you all.”
Christ answered him:
“And with your spirit.”
He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying:
“Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead,
and Christ will give you light.”
– St Epiphanius of Salamis
A Prayer for Holy Saturday
This is the hardest time to pray: after the drama and catastrophe, before the angels and the big reveal.
The passion, the agony, the desperate grief have given way to numbness and absence in this time in between.
God seems to be offstage, preparing for the final scene, taking care of ancient souls in other worlds or clothing the hidden, broken body in resurrection glory.
So let our prayer this day be plain and to the point: May God be with us in the waiting, and may we wait with hope, today and every time in between.
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