We all have personal feast days, days that we celebrate for different reasons, usually because of a saint we’re named after or one to whom we have great devotion. Over the last few years I have come to look at Holy Saturday as a personal feast day. Ever since my brother, Tim, died, it has taken on great meaning: this day during which it looks like nothing is happening, when, in fact, great and “terrible” things are happening. Jesus is setting the captives free. Christ has descended into our loneliness, into our grief, into those spaces in our lives–and of those we love–where darkness seems to reign. And that is Good News. We are no longer alone. He is, indeed, God-with-us. That is the wonder and consolation of this day. That was so true for me as I walked through those dark days after Tim took his life. Christ gave me such an assurance of His being with my brother during those dark, dark moments in his life. . . and an assurance of the same for myself. “Though I walk through the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me.” (Ps 23.4)
Christ is there with us, whether we perceive Him or not.
Holy Saturday is the day of the ‘death of God,’ the day which expresses the unparalleled experience of our age, anticipating the fact that God is simply absent, that the grave hides him, that he no longer awakes, no longer speaks, so that one no longer needs to gainsay him but can simply overlook him . . . Christ strode through the gate of our final lonelienss; in his passion he went down into the abyss of our abandonment. Where no voice can reach us any longer, there is he. Hell is thereby overcome, or, to be more accurate, death, which was previously hell, is hell no longer. Neither is the same any longer because there is life in the midst of death, because love dwells in it.
Christ descended into “Hell” and is therefore close to those cast into it, transforming their darkness into light. Suffering and torment is still terrible and well-nigh unbearable. Yet the star of hope has risen–the anchor of the heart reaches the very throne of God. Instead of evil being unleashed within man, the light shines victorious: suffering–without ceasing to be suffering–becomes, despite everything, a hymn of praise. (Benedict XVI, Spes Salvi)
For further reading on the significance of this day, see these posts: “Where is Christ today?” and “Why Saturday is Mary’s Day”
Witnesses to Hope 