Holy Saturday
Holy Saturday is a day that is not so much talked about in the liturgical year. Few liturgical benchmarks can be taken into account - nothing really happens in most churches on Holy Saturday. In monasteries, Tenebrae are sung in the morning, i.e., a series of psalmic lamentations that regretfully accentuate the emptiness, and the ritual extinction of candles in the lampstand used especially for this occasion emphasizes the absence of Jesus, our light.
However, there are no liturgical gatherings before dark. There are not even many stories to deal with, there are no public ceremonies or special services to interrupt the day's sense of expectation and emptiness. For the most part, we are simply left to ourselves on Holy Saturday. Yet every human who has ever walked on the earth knows what the emptiness of Holy Saturday is talking about. All who ever lived, who will ever live, will one day experience their own Holy Saturday. Someday we will all know the power of a depressing loss when life as we know it will change when all hope dies. Then and only then will we begin to understand the purpose of Holy Saturday.
The importance of Holy Saturday lies in its power to lead us to the kind of faith that the spiritual masters call "mature". Faith on Holy Saturday is not counting our blessings. It is about dealing with the darkness and growing up to hope. Without the occurrence of Holy Saturday in our live, none of us can truly grow up spiritually.
Today the church is empty. Today, loss finally reigns. We sit in empty pews, we pass empty churches, having heavy hearts from yesterday's Good Friday reality. Today, lonely and orphaned, we are faced with the question which we try so hard to avoid the rest of the year: how to treat the God of Darkness and at the same time the Light Giver? Have we havebeen abandoned? Are we on our own in this world? Is there nothing else? Was all the rest just a fairy tale?
The birth of Jesus with lights, organs, choirs, chants of "Gloria" and assurances of the coming happiness seem very distant now. The Three Wise Men with their cosmic promise are long gone. The baptism in Jordan and the voice coming down from heaven are now fading, fading, and losing their clarity over time. Healings of the sick and miracles done to women, caring for strangers, and embracing outcasts, now have a taste of fantasy as it once was of truth. The triumphant entry into Jerusalem is a mocking memory at best. As soon as a new day dawned, darkness engulfed them.
Where is Jesus who walked on the earth as we still walk? Jesus, who understands us, has disappeared, humiliated, powerless, incomprehensible to his persecutor. Jesus, for whom the stars showed up in Bethlehem, was pinned down with his face to the ground, and all promises of blessings and a whole new vision of life came to naught. It ended in disgrace, humiliation and destruction. The apostles are scattered. The community fell into disrepair. There are no enthusiastic crowds to follow. We rely only on ourselves now. It remains to ask ourselves the question that Jesus once asked Peter: "And who do you say that I am?" (Mk 8:29).
The important thing on Easter Saturday is that just when it is emptiness, we begin to understand that as much of God's voice is in the emptiness as there is in waiting. Now, when we feel Jesus' absence most acutely, we listen to Him most carefully. And suddenly we are completely immersed in what He has become for us. Now we can see exactly how much His life and words mean to us. We begin to realize that we have already been changed by this. What could we do without it?
We now know that without Jesus, we would not have found a bridge to God. Once we heard a voice in Him telling us who God is for sure. Once we found out by looking at him who we ourselves are and to be if we become fully human.
Without Jesus, we will not even be able to form our own identity. How would we know who we are without Jesus' pattern by which we can measure our dignity and goodness? What is hope when there is no one left to guarantee it?
There is no doubt that this is the day descent into the tomb of our own and Jesus'. Now is the time for our false hope to die. But it is also time for our faithless despair to die. Hope, as you can see, is a delicate thing, often confused with certainty, and seldom understood as a spiritual discipline that only assures us of one thing: in the end, whatever happens, it will be a divine will solution, even if we try to bend it to our own goals. We have seen, for example, how often darkness leads to light. Some people do not engage in good until they experience evil. For others, faith cannot flourish until they realize that despair has not triumphed. So, there is certainly hope here as well.
There is hope that we will learn the meaning of hope, that we will not resist the certainty that in the end God will carry out His will, no matter how much man tries to overthrow it.
There is hope that God exists in the shadows of life as well as in its light, in the night of the soul as well as in the dawn of life, for light and darkness, night and dawn belong to God.
The hope is that we will eventually stop calling "good" just what we want and start recognizing that good can take on strange looks: shepherds, fishers and customs officers, thief’s and cowards. We can hope to end up painting our world only in our own colors.
There is hope that we will finally be able to find safety in the fact of God's understanding of weakness: "Go, and from now on sin no more" (cf. Jn 8:11) - we hear again. "Today you will be with me in Paradise" (cf. Lk 23:43) - we remember what was said to the thief on the cross. This is the hope that descends from the Icon of Mercy.
There is hope that we will finally begin to see the world as God sees the world and trust that God is truly always and everywhere in everything - vague and clear whether we can see God's hand at any given moment.
What is about Holy Saturday is that we should be able to reach this point of view before Easter Vagile begins and before the cantor sings Exultet in the dark. So, loss is profit, and silence is a truly clear message from God.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george