The church is dark now. The altar is stripped and bare. Some are getting up and leaving in silence. Others remain kneeling, looking into the darkness. Holy Saturday is ahead, the most quiet day of the year. The silence of that silent night, holy night, the night when God was born was broken by the sounds of a baby, a mother’s words of comfort and angels in concert. Holy Saturday, by contrast, is the sound of prefect silence. Yesterday’s mockery, the good thief’s prayer, the cry of dereliction””all that is past now. Mary has dried her tears, and the whole creation is still, waiting for what will happen next.
Some say that on Holy Saturday Jesus went to hell in triumph, to free the souls long imprisoned there. Others say he descended into a death deeper than death, to embrace in his love even the damned. We do not know. Scripture, tradition and pious writings provide hints and speculations, but about this most silent day it is perhaps best to observe the silence. One day I expect he will tell us all about it. When we are able to understand what we cannot now even understand why we cannot understand.
–Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009)
Through no intent of my own I’ve come to spend much of Holy Saturday simply contemplating “no Christ.” Had he never come into the world, or never come into my life … what would be different?
It’s not pleasant to imagine, in either case, wherein lies the root of profound thanks-giving.
#1, to paraphrase a recent comment, all that stands in the way of us and Satan’s pitchfork is Jesus Christ.
Jesus is dead. He is a failed messiah and he has suffered the penalty. The disciples are in hiding and Judas has killed himself. It is the Sabboah. And tomorrow is just the first day of the week. All our hopes lie buried in a sealed tomb. This is Holy Saturday.
I have always felt that the awe of Jesus’s death was not so much that he died – – all men do that, after all – – but that the God of the Universe, in the Person of His Son, died not knowing for sure whether His Father might not consign Him to Hell for all eternity, for your sins and mine – – and yet Jesus chose to go ahead with it! I have always believed that Jesus had a choice – – die and save me and this speck of dust circling a minor star in an average galaxy among a trillion such galaxies – – or live and let me go unknowingly on my way to perdition. That is, for me, the miracle.