Holy Saturday
Having bought a linen cloth, (Joseph of Arimathea) took (Jesus) down, wrapped him in the linen cloth and laid him in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock, Then he rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses watched where he was laid. – Mark 15:46-47
Holy Saturday. The forgotten day. The Church has no public liturgy for this day, other than the Liturgy of the Hours. Moreover, the way our parishes tend to schedule the Triduum celebrations on three consecutive nights – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil – makes Holy Saturday itself all the more invisible. Liturgically, we lose the sense of the Resurrection happening “on the third day”. Moreover, we easily slide past Holy Saturday in our rush to the Vigil. This is a shame, as Holy Saturday has much to teach us. Let us pause, then, by the tomb of Jesus, as Mary Magdalene and the other women did, that we might see what this time might reveal to us.
Let us consider, first of all, how this day would have looked from the perspective of the apostles, the women, and others who had followed Jesus. Jesus was now dead. Really dead. There was no last-minute miracle. No obvious divine intervention. Jesus was condemned, tortured, and put to death. The Messiah was killed. How could the Messiah be (apparently) defeated by his enemies? And not any kind of death. Crucifixion. Those who died in this way were seen as especially cursed. The words of Deuteronomy – “Cursed be anyone who hangs on a tree” – was applied to those who were crucified. How could Jesus be the Messiah, if he died such a death and is now, seemingly, cursed by God? It was a huge test of faith for Jesus’ followers. Jesus warned them, more than once, of his imminent death. He spoke of his rising on the third day. But his followers, by and large, did not understand what that meant. Resurrection, in their understanding, was something that happened at the end of time, and to everyone. All they know now is that the one in whom they had placed their faith, hope, and love is dead. They grieve. Their world, and their assumptions, have been shattered. They are tempted by disillusionment.
Christians who live in North America or Europe today are not all that far from that experience. As Pope Benedict XVI pointed out in his meditation on the Shroud of Turin in 2010, we live in a “Holy Saturday” culture. Christianity still exists in the West, but no longer has the role it once had for either the majority of citizens or for their governments. Most live as though God were dead. A “new atheism” has appeared, and has gained a following. Moreover, Christians have seen scandals of all kinds, as well as divisions between denominations and within them. Many Christians mourn the loss of an age when Christian values seemed to be dominant. More and more people prefer to identify themselves as ‘spiritual’ but not ‘religious’ – meaning that they do not belong to any church whatsoever. Many feel disillusioned and lost in a new secular age in the West. We may feel like spiritual Rip Van Winkles, who awaken one day to find that everything they once knew has changed. We may feel like exiles in their own countries. We wonder if our faith has a future.
If this is a “Holy Saturday” culture, then how do we as Christians live Holy Saturday? What can it teach us?
Holy Saturday is the Sabbath of the Lord. Christ has suffered and died, and is now at rest. In a sense, Holy Saturday is the last “old” Sabbath. The Church honors it by having no public liturgy at all – the only day in the liturgical year that is without a public liturgy. We are called to stop for a while and be like the women at the tomb of Jesus, who watch. It is a kind of Advent, a kind of waiting. It is the waiting of people whose hopes appear to be shattered and discredited. There is nothing we can do to change that. We wait for the Lord, for only the Lord can save us now. We wait in hope, trusting that the Lord will prove faithful to his covenant in the end, even if that faithfulness moves in a direction we could not have anticipated. Thus, Holy Saturday is the one day in the liturgical year when all Christians are invited to be like hermits, whose daily lives are based not on anything they can do but on sheer faith that the Lord honors his covenant promises to us. They witness by their lives that God alone suffices.
This waiting in faith and hope is not easy. It was not easy for the women by the tomb. Ancient Israel found itself torn by the reality of death. On the one hand, we see the fear, expressed in many of the psalms, that death was final and that the dead had no hope: “Will you work your wonders among the dead? Will the shades stand and praise you?” On the other, the Hebrew Scriptures are shot through with the conviction that the Lord was their Rock, their Savior, and that he would not utterly abandon them, even with their many sins. There was this hope that even death did not have the last word. We see it in the Suffering Servant passages of Isaiah, and hear it on the lips of the Maccabean martyrs. The women at Jesus’ tomb stand in this liminal space, between despair and hope, and yet choose to watch. They choose to trust in the faithfulness of God, even at the tomb of Jesus. They wait. They hope – even in their grief. That is why they would be the first to receive the Good News of the Resurrection of Jesus, on the First Day of the week, the new Sabbath of the Lord. They would find rest, and joy.
How may we enter into the spirit of this day, this Sabbath of the Lord? Stop. Wait. Keep watch in any way you can. Bring your own troubled, broken faith before what looks for all the world like its tomb. Be willing to acknowledge that brokenness in all its pain and sadness. Know that there isn’t much you can do on your own to fix or change it. But keep watch anyway. Wait, for the Lord is faithful. Christ will not abandon anyone who hopes in him. He may fulfill his promises to you, or me, in ways we do not expect. We may have to endure the shattering of old, immature assumptions and ways of believing. We are like caterpillars who seem to dissolve in their cocoons, only to be remade by the power of the Holy Spirit into something we could never have foreseen. Wait, and the joy of the Risen Lord will be reborn, once again, in your heart. It will not make your wounds disappear. After all, the Risen Lord’s body kept all its old wounds. But even these wounds will be transformed into windows of compassion, hope and courage, means of inner healing for you and for all those you serve. Let us wait and watch, then. The Lord is about to fulfill his promises to us all.