Yet, there was one large omission that set all other truth dangerously at risk: the omission of holy rest. The refusal to be silent. The obsessive avoidance of emptiness. The denial of any experience and any people in the least bit suggestive of godforsakenness.

It was far more than an annual ignorance on Holy Saturday; it was religiously fueled, weekly arrogance. Not only was the Good Friday crucifixion bridged to the Easter resurrection by this day furious with energy and lucrative with reward, but all the gospel truths were likewise set as either introductions or conclusions to the human action that displayed our prowess and our virtue every week of the year. God was background to our business. Every gospel truth was maintained intact and all the human energy was wholly admirable, but the rhythms were all wrong, the proportions wildly skewed. Desolation””and with it companionship with the desolate, from first-century Semites to twentieth-century Indians””was all but wiped from consciousness.
But there came a point at which I was convinced that it was critically important to pay more attention to what God does than what I do; to find daily, weekly, yearly rhythms that would get that awareness into my bones. Holy Saturday for a start. And then, times to visit people in despair, and learn their names, and wait for resurrection.

Embedded in my memory now is this most poignant irony: those seven or eight Indians, with the Thunderbird empties lying around, drunk in the alley behind the Pastime Baron Saturday afternoon, while we Scandinavian Christians worked diligently late into the night, oblivious to the holiness of the day. The Indians were in despair, religious despair, something very much like the Holy Saturday despair narrated in the Gospels. Their way of life had come to nothing, the only buffalo left to them engraved on nickels, a couple of which one of their squaws had paid out that morning for four bony ham hocks. The early sacredness of their lives was a wasteland; and they, godforsaken as they supposed, drugged their despair with Thunderbird and buried their dead visions and dreams in the alley behind the Pastime, ignorant of the God at work beneath their emptiness.

Take the time to read it all.

The Dead Christ in the Tomb with Two Angels
c. 1610
Abraham Janssen van Nuyssen

(Met Museum)#HolySaturday pic.twitter.com/KOGfGBPvcx

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) April 16, 2022

Holy Saturday is a neglected day in parish life. Few people attend the Services. Popular piety usually reduces Holy Week to one day Holy Friday. This day is quickly replaced by another Easter Sunday. Christ is dead and then suddenly alive. Great sorrow is suddenly replaced by great joy. In such a scheme Holy Saturday is lost.

In the understanding of the Church, sorrow is not replaced by joy; it is transformed into joy. This distinction indicates that it is precisely within death the Christ continues to effect triumph.

–Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983)

A Holy Saturday prayer: Almighty & Eternal God, on the edge of sadness when all seemed lost, you restored to us the Savior we thought defeated and conquered. Help us to empty ourselves of self-concern that we might see your hand in every failure and your victory in every defeat. pic.twitter.com/RearMpyPhH

— W. David O. Taylor (@wdavidotaylor) April 3, 2021

‘O God of the living, on this day your Son our Savior descended to the place of the dead: Look with kindness on all of us who wait in hope for liberation from the corruption of sin and death, and give us a share in the glory of the children of God; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.’

One of the most beautiful and poignant sculptures ever made. Michelangelo’s Pietà in St Peter’s shows Mary with her dead son in her arms just before he is placed in the tomb. We join Our Blessed Mother this Holy Saturday waiting in quiet and remember all parents who mourn a child pic.twitter.com/PT42hUuy9W

— frdfitz (@frdfitz) April 3, 2021

‘In a sermon preached before King Edward VI on 19 April 1549, Hugh Latimer (1487–1555) reeled over contemporary challenges to the traditional view of the Descensus Christi ad inferos: “Here is much ado! These new upstarting spirits say, ‘Christ never descended into hell, neither in body nor soul.’”[22] Against such cavils, Latimer affirms that Christ did descend to hell, locally—that is, his soul truly and physically descended to the place (locus), hell, to redeem and liberate the righteous who died on earth before his death on the cross. In many ways, for many believers, this traditional view endured the Reformation.’

Read it all.

“My body shall rest in hope.”
— Antiphon 2, Office of Readings, Holy Saturday #HolySaturday pic.twitter.com/WWiwCwjpNA

— Father Tom Willis ✝️ (@StAugPastor) April 16, 2022

In this empty hallway, there’s nothing expected of us at this moment. The work is out of our hands, and all we can do is wait, breathe, look around. People sometimes feel like this when they’ve been up all night with someone who’s seriously ill or dying, or when they’ve been through a non-stop series of enormously demanding tasks. A sort of peace, but more a sort of ‘limbo’, an in-between moment. For now, nothing more to do; tired, empty, slightly numbed, we rest for a bit, knowing that what matters is now happening somewhere else.

–Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

The Lamentation of Christ. #HolySaturday #HolyWeek pic.twitter.com/CIDRagT5Ru

— Marlene T. Diaz (@academicknight) April 3, 2021

Loving Father, in the despair of your death upon the cross, our minds search the horizon in the hope and anticipation that we might but glimpse the light of your Easter resurrection.

In the silence of today, we remember that in death you remained hidden from the world and in our sorrow we keep watch with you. Through the stillness speak to us the words of confidence that we might not keep our faith concealed but instead go forth to share with others the gift of love that you so freely give to us.
Amen.

I should have climbed up into a tree 🌳😅 #FullMoon #PinkMoon #LovElyCathedral pic.twitter.com/9nb4axN1dT

— Veronica in the Fens 🧚🏼‍♀️ (@VeronicaJoPo) April 16, 2022

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who as on this day didst rest in the sepulchre, and didst thereby sanctify the grave to be a bed of hope to thy people: Make us so to abound in sorrow for our sins, which were the cause of thy passion, that when our bodies rest in the dust, our souls may live with thee; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.

#HolySaturday. The Great Silence of the Church ✝️🙏🏻⛪️. pic.twitter.com/UTsvkqoQKU

— Nicolas Boisson ☦︎ (@FrenchAnglican) April 16, 2022

“By the grace of God” Jesus tasted death “for every one”. In his plan of salvation, God ordained that his Son should not only “die for our sins” but should also “taste death”, experience the condition of death, the separation of his soul from his body, between the time he expired on the cross and the time he was raised from the dead. The state of the dead Christ is the mystery of the tomb and the descent into hell. It is the mystery of Holy Saturday, when Christ, lying in the tomb, reveals God’s great sabbath rest after the fulfillment of man’s salvation, which brings peace to the whole universe.

–The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, para. 624

Having finished all his work of redeeming the world, having completed his re-creation of humanity, Jesus our God rested on the seventh day.

Today, Holy Saturday, Jesus takes a Sabbath in the tomb for us. pic.twitter.com/WWwAxInZaQ

— Chad Bird (@birdchadlouis) April 16, 2022

I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been, if you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you, you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.

–C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

#holysaturday is the strangest day in human history, an eternal sabbath suspended in time.

So many of us live so much of our lives here in God’s waiting room, caught in a world without answers somewhere between crucifixion and resurrection.,, pic.twitter.com/11Qj7bUqjA

— Pete Greig (@PeteGreig) April 16, 2022

In the midst of life we are in death.

We grow and wither as quickly as flowers;

we disappear like shadows.

To whom can we go for help, but to you, Lord God,

though you are rightly displeased because of our sins?

And yet, Lord God Almighty,

most holy and most merciful Saviour,

deliver us from the bitterness of eternal death.

You know the secrets of our hearts;

mercifully hear us, most worthy judge eternal;

keep us, at our last hour,

in the consolation of your love.

[You, O Lord, are gracious and compassionate,

slow to anger and rich in love.

As kind as a father is to his children,

so kind is the Lord to those who honour him.

For you know what we are made of;

you remember that we are dust.

As for us, our life is like grass.

We grow and flourish like a wildflower;

then the wind blows on it, and it is gone

no-one sees it again.

But for those who honour the Lord, his love lasts forever,

and his goodness endures for all generations.]

Today is #HolySaturday, also called Easter Vigil, that ends the Lenten season.

On Holy Saturday the Church is at the Lord's tomb, meditating on his passion and death, and awaiting his #resurrection with prayer and fasting. pic.twitter.com/uMfMyVPSZz

— Church in Poland (@ChurchInPoland) April 16, 2022

Grant, Lord,
that we who are baptized into the death
of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
may continually put to death our evil desires
and be buried with him;
and that through the grave and gate of death
we may pass to our joyful resurrection;
through his merits,
who died and was buried and rose again for us,
your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

"Therefore my heart is glad, my soul rejoices;
my body also dwells secure,
For you will not abandon my soul among the dead,
nor let your devout one see decay."
//Psalm 16:9-10#HolySaturday #HolyWeek pic.twitter.com/l25mQHlr7Z

— Cathedral of Christ the King, Atlanta (@CathedralCTK) April 16, 2022

So then, there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God; for whoever enters God’s rest also ceases from his labors as God did from his.

–Hebrews 4:10-11

There's something eery about the Cathedral with no main lights. #HolySaturday pic.twitter.com/O5IvoSWP5L

— OurCofE (@OurCofE) March 26, 2016

Look through them all.

In pictures: Good Friday around the world https://t.co/AD9uDyUGUE

— The Guardian (@guardian) April 16, 2022

Grant, O Lord, unto us, and to all thy servants, the grace of perseverance unto the end; in the power of him who for the finishing of thy work laid down his life, even thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Crucifixion 1958. This shocking painting was inspired by a mound of rubble in Cookham High Street transformed into a Cavalry. The crosses are arranged into an almost “coffin like shape” with Christ seen from behind. His approach is so different to other works on this subject. pic.twitter.com/H7LX1iozgV

— Stanley Spencer Gallery (@SpencerCookham) April 15, 2022

O God, the Father of mankind, who didst suffer thine only Son to be set forth as a spectacle despised, derided, and scornfully arrayed, yet in his humiliation to reveal his majesty: Draw us, we beseech thee, both to behold the Man and to worship the King, immortal, eternal, world without end.

—Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

“Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!' And having said this he breathed his last” Psalm 31:1-5 #GoodFriday #HolyWeek #medievaltwitter @Pinterest pic.twitter.com/WzTw58Fiw5

— Marlene T. Diaz (@academicknight) April 15, 2022

[Shusaku] Endo locates the point of contact between Japanese life and the Gospel in what he observes, and has experienced personally, to be the essence of Japanese religious awareness. This he sees as the sense of failure in life and the subsequent shame and guilt that leave a lasting impact upon a person’s life. Such theological notions as love, grace, trust, and truth are intelligible only in the experience of their opposites. Endo sees them incarnate in the person of Jesus through his own experience of failure, rejection, and, most of all, ineffectualness. Only rarely has modern Christianity presented the story of Jesus as the one to whom those who had failed, were rejected, lonely, and alienated could turn and find understanding and compassion. Endo argues that it is our universal human experience of failure in life that provides us with an understanding of Christian faith in its depth.

ADORACIÓN A CRISTO EN LA CRUZ: "Nosotros, al reconocer, proclamar y exaltar la realeza de Cristo, lo hacemos a través de la adoración del Verbo hecho Hombre en la figura del fracaso y la derrota humana. Nosotros adoramos a Cristo en la Cruz. + pic.twitter.com/mfFyWABdCm

— Gandalf (@gandalf_1010) April 15, 2022

–Fumitaka Matsuoka, The Christology of Shusaku Endo, Theology Today (October 1982) [emphasis mine]

“Mother, now I may you say:
Better that I alone should die
Than all mankind should go to hell.”
“Son, I see your body swung,
Your breast, your hand, your foot through-stung; [pierced]
No wonder that I mourn!”

“Mother, if I dare you tell,
If I die not, you will go to hell;
I suffer this death for your sake.”
“Son, you are so meek and kind;
Blame me not, it is my kind [nature]
That I for you this sorrow make.”

“Mother, have mercy! let me die,
Adam out of hell to buy
And all mankind that is forlorn!”
“Son, what would you have me do?
Your pain pains me to death;
Let me die before you.”

“Mother, now you may well learn
What pain they endure who children bear,
What sorrow they have who children lose.”
“Son, indeed, I can you tell,
No sorrow but the pain of hell
Is greater than to suffer so!”

Read it all.

'Alone, alone,
Sore I sigh and all for one.'

From last year, and perhaps still relevant today: being alone on Good Friday, in some medieval poems https://t.co/QRpcQ3Q1tu pic.twitter.com/nd9Q6tR01z

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) April 2, 2021

O My chief good,
How shall I measure out thy bloud?
How shall I count what thee befell,
And each grief tell?

Shall I thy woes
Number according to thy foes?
Or, since one starre show’d thy first breath,
Shall all thy death?

Or shall each leaf,
Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?
Or can not leaves, but fruit, be signe
Of the true vine?

Then let each houre
Of my whole life one grief devoure;
That thy distresse through all may runne,
And be my sunne.
Or rather let
My severall sinnes their sorrows get;
That as each beast his cure doth know,
Each sinne may so.

Since bloud is fittest, Lord, to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloudie fight;
My heart hath store, write there, where in
One box doth lie both ink and sinne:

That when sinne spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes,
All come to lodge there, sinne may say,
No room for me, and flie away.

Sinne being gone, oh fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sinne take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn.

–George Herbert (1593-1633)

3/3 Just had to remind you of this Rogier crucifixion. They knew tragedy, the old masters. pic.twitter.com/SUoCowb9ME

— Dr. Peter Paul Rubens 🇺🇦 (@PP_Rubens) November 1, 2021

“MY GOD, MY GOD, why hast thou forsaken me?” As Christ speaks those words, he too is in the wilderness. He speaks them when all is lost. He speaks them when there is nothing even he can hear except for the croak of his own voice and when as far as even he can see there is no God to hear him. And in a way his words are a love song, the greatest love song of them all. In a way his words are the words we all of us must speak before we know what it means to love God as we are commanded to love him.

“My God, my God.” Though God is not there for him to see or hear, he calls on him still because he can do no other. Not even the cross, not even death, not even life, can destroy his love for God. Not even God can destroy his love for God because the love he loves God with is God’s love empowering him to love in return with all his heart even when his heart is all but broken.

–Frederick Buechner A Room Called Remember (HarperOne:New York, 1992 paperback ed. of 1984 original), Chapter 4

The Crucifixion, Art by Peter Paul Rubens (1618). https://t.co/xsQS6I4wzs pic.twitter.com/rWyNyZuotN

— (@WayneParker_) January 25, 2022

Listen to it all.

“When God becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth, he not only enters into the finitude of man, but in his death on the cross also enters into the situation of man’s godforsakenness. In Jesus he does not die the natural death of a finite being, but the violent death of the criminal on the cross, the death of complete abandonment by God. The suffering in the passion of Jesus is abandonment, rejection by God, his Father. God does not become a religion, so that man participates in him by corresponding religious thoughts and feelings. God does not become a law, so that man participates in him through obedience to a law. God does not become an ideal, so that man achieves community with him through constant striving. He humbles himself and takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so that all the godless and the godforsaken can experience communion with him.”

–Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), p, 414

As tomorrow is Good Friday, can you tell me what stands out as odd in this wonderful depiction of the crucifixion by Rembrandt. I’ve been fascinated by this painting from the moment I first saw it. pic.twitter.com/R1YpcDgpTd

— Ashley (@AshTreees) April 1, 2021

This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?

Read it all.

There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified,
Who died to save us all. pic.twitter.com/MV7PPs9C4e

— Holy Trinity Geneva (@GenevaAnglican) April 15, 2022

Almighty Father,
look with mercy on this your family
for which our Lord Jesus Christ was content to be betrayed
and given up into the hands of sinners
and to suffer death upon the cross;
who is alive and glorified with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

At the Cross #GoodFriday @trinitychelt @GlosDioc @churchofengland pic.twitter.com/1Eulh52WCJ

— Trinity Cheltenham (@trinitychelt) April 15, 2022

Isn’t it curious that the Son of God would die in this particular way? Even Paul was permitted a nice, neat slice of the sword. Why did the Son of God die in the worst possible way? That’s the point here. Crucifixion was specifically designed to be the worst of the worst. It was so bad, good Roman citizens didn’t discuss it in public. It’s very much like the way we avoid talking about death and sin. The Romans avoided talking about crucifixion because it was so horrible, so disgusting, so obscene they used that word to describe it.

Why this method and not another? Because it corresponds to the depth of depravity caused by human rebellion against God. It shows us just how bad things really are with us. No wonder we don’t want to look at it. Yet again, the African American church has never been afraid to look at it. It gives them hope. It gives them strength. It gives them comfort. As for the blood: It is important because it’s mentioned so much in Scripture. It’s a synecdoche, a word that stands for the whole thing. When you say “the blood of Christ,” you mean his self-offering, his death, the horror of it, the pouring out of it. It sums up the whole thing.

And it’s not just a metaphor; he really did shed blood when he was scourged. He was a bloody mess. I remember one line from an article by a secular journalist. Concerning the crucifixion of Jesus, he wrote, “He must have been ghastly to behold.” That’s a great sentence.

—Fleming Rutledge in a Christianity Today interview (emphasis mine)

Art:
Calvary
by
Abraham Janssens, 1575–1632
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes  #Triduum #PassionofChrist #Jesus❤️#GoodFriday #2April #2Apr2021#ReligiousArt #CatholicArt #Christian #Catholic #KalinaB pic.twitter.com/NZpgQBQr5r

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 2, 2021

Alone thou goest forth, O Lord, in sacrifice to die;
is this thy sorrow nought to us who pass unheeding by?

Our sins, not thine, thou bearest, Lord; make us thy sorrow feel,
till through our pity and our shame love answers love’s appeal.

This is earth’s darkest hour, but thou dost light and life restore;
then let all praise be given thee who livest evermore.

Grant us with thee to suffer pain that, as we share this hour,
thy cross may bring us to thy joy and resurrection power [The Hymnal 1982 #164].

Albrecht Durer: Crucifixion (Woodcut), 1511 pic.twitter.com/26cqOCmzpL

— Gerard Gleeson (@gerardAgleeson) April 10, 2020

O Lord Jesu Christ, take us to thyself; draw us with cords to the foot of thy cross: for we have no strength to come, and we know not the way. Thou art mighty to save, and none can separate us from thy love. Bring us home to thyself, for we are gone astray. We have wandered; do thou seek us. Under the shadow of thy cross let us live all the rest of our lives, and there we shall be safe.

Painted for the sacristy of the Dominican monastery San Pablo el Real, Seville
Christ on the Cross by Francisco de Zurbarán 1627 pic.twitter.com/SUrNsGXjpW

— DailyArt (@DailyArtApp) April 19, 2019

I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of his wrath;
he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
surely against me he turns his hand
again and again the whole day long.

He has made my flesh and my skin waste away,
and broken my bones;
he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
he has made me dwell in darkness
like the dead of long ago.

He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has put heavy chains on me;
though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
he has blocked my ways with hewn stones,
he has made my paths crooked.

Lamentations 3:1-9

Good Friday- Christ with the instruments of the Passion. Horae c.1517 [LPL MS3561 f.78v.] pic.twitter.com/EPwdgeBSfm

— LambethPalaceLibrary (@lampallib) March 25, 2016

Il Guercino's dramatic "Capturing Christ" (1621) @FitzMuseum_UK #art #twitart #Baroque pic.twitter.com/8LoBr5ptCs

— Paul Wadey (@pwadey) October 26, 2016

A #MaundyThursday healing miracle performed by the monastic reformer St Gilbert of Sempringham (1083-1189). #medieval #histmed pic.twitter.com/nmboh9rc24

— Katherine Harvey (@keharvey2013) April 13, 2017