Great & Holy Saturday!

The day after ‘Good Friday’, the middle of the Triduum is often passed over by theology and by many Christians without comment. Yet on this day the Church invites us to reflect deeply on the fact that Jesus is truly among the dead – stone cold dead and buried, experiencing death in its starkest reality, cut off from the land of the living, with all human relationships severed. There is no room for automatically interpreting the cross as resurrection. Not to have time to linger over the meaning of this day means repressing the horror and the mystery of the real death of Jesus and therefore not to appreciate its significance. For making his death simply mean resurrection is a serious denial of the deadliness of death. To leave out this day, to reduce the Paschal Mystery simply to two days is to leave out too much. We cannot allow resurrection to swallow up death. We dare not prematurely smuggle into Jesus’ experience an anticipation of the resurrection – as though this were the automatic consequence of going down into darkness. Death means death. Jesus lays in the tomb, dead and buried, dead among the dead. Stone cold dead.

On Holy Saturday, the Church thus invites us to take very seriously the experience of the disciples and their sense of loss. The brute experience of his death was stunning for them. This Jesus, on whom they had pinned all their hopes for something radically new, - in a matter of hours had now been condemned as a common criminal, violently removed from life by a state execution and buried as a corpse to lie in a stranger’s tomb. He was dead, - stone cold dead, lifeless. This was a devastating end to their dreams and plans, shattering their hopes. It was all over, finished. The bottom of their world had collapsed and now all were numb with grief and shock as they fled, broken and demoralised from Jerusalem, to take up their previous occupations (fishing). Sheer hopelessness seems to have set in (Emmaus Luke 24:21)

But what is happening in this ‘Tomb time?’

To penetrate the real meaning of ‘Holy Saturday’ – with Jesus lying dead in the tomb – requires a special effort for the Christian imagination today. Jesus really died. His death was never undone. We need to recapture the pre-Christian sense of death. This is not to indulge in an anachronism. Jesus experienced death in all its stark reality. What did this mean? What was the understanding of death for a first century Jew? Together with this question we can also ask what did the early Church mean when in the so-called ‘Apostle’s Creed’ it claimed that after being crucified, died and buried, Jesus “descended into hell”? What is this hell that Jesus goes down into?

For the first time now, in the death of Jesus of Nazareth, God himself experiences what it is for a human being to die – not just any death, but the violent, tortured death of the innocent-righteous one who is falsely condemned. But not just physical death, not just the death of the innocent, but moral death, the death of a guilty sinner! In his descent, Jesus identifies with the sinner’s radical separation and estrangement from God. His descent is a descent into the hell of those who in their freedom have rejected God. Jesus enters into the abyss of our loneliness and lost-ness. This is the moment of supreme identification of God with humanity. In this instant the incarnation is complete. No one can accuse God now of being an outsider to the pain and suffering of the human condition. By this, God shows himself in solidarity with all the innocent victims and all guilty sinners.

A reading from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday

"What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.
Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, he who is God, and Adam's son.
The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: 'My Lord be with you all.' And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.
‘I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise.
‘I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.
‘For you, I your God became your son; for you, I the Master took on your form; that of slave; for you, I who am above the heavens came on earth and under the earth; for you, man, I became as a man without help, free among the dead; for you, who left a garden, I was handed over to Jews from a garden and crucified in a garden.
‘Look at the spittle on my face, which I received because of you, in order to restore you to that first divine inbreathing at creation. See the blows on my cheeks, which I accepted in order to refashion your distorted form to my own image.
'See the scourging of my back, which I accepted in order to disperse the load of your sins which was laid upon your back. See my hands nailed to the tree for a good purpose, for you, who stretched out your hand to the tree for an evil one.
`I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side, for you, who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you.
‘But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God.
"The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness; the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages