Of the three important days during Holy Week — Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday — the least understood is Holy Saturday. It is the day when nothing seems to happen, at least to the busyness of the church in modern and post-modern time. Theologically, it seems so silent that no human mind can wrap around “what happened” between Good Friday and Easter morning.
The early church teaches that Holy Saturday is really not that calm, at least for Jesus and many souls in the underworld. Well hidden in 1 Peter is this text: “For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the Spirit as God does.” (1 Peter 4:6). In Philippians 2:11, Paul writes, “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.”
These and many other texts of the Old and the New Testament led the early church councils to form the Apostle Creed (Ecumenical Version) to include “He descended to the dead. On the third day, He rose again…” This teaching gives Christians the grounds to trust that Jesus indeed died for all. “All” includes not only the living but also the dead who died without ever hearing the name of Jesus. On Holy Saturday, the creator who would not forget his children “descended into hell” to preach the gospel. It is as if he walked through the gate of the underworld and reached into the depth of hell to lift out and to liberate all righteous souls.
On Good Friday, we see the horrendous death that God undertakes on our behalf. Holy Saturday is the first fruit of God’s redemptive work for us, all of us, beginning with the lowest and most needy, those in the depth of hell, and then to the living who need to be free of despair, sadness, hopelessness, or any other residual cause by human condition. Hell may still be there but the gate is wide open as the Good News is preached.
If you are grieving for the death of a loved one, or grieving for a particular reason that can’t be voiced, this season gives us a safe place to be, the space of Holy Saturday. It’s a good place to occupy, the space between death and resurrection. You and I and the world around us will at one point or another suffer a loss that zaps the life out of us. When that happens, we can live in a Holy Saturday world to find rest for our souls. We can be assured that there is a limit to our trouble, our distress, our grief, or our oppression. A new day is coming. After all God is in the business of resurrection, whether death is in one’s body, one’s soul, or one’s circumstance.
With that said, have a blessed Holy Week. I hope to see you at church for Thursday Passover Meal, Friday Tenebrae Service, and Easter Sunday Worship.
~ Mai
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