But really, who wants to think about what this day was like? Jesus, buried behind a tomb. Judas hanging himself on a tree. The disciples hiding in fright, scattered to the four winds in fear.
The hopes of all who followed Jesus shattered and lost… From the appearance of all who looked up, a day in which evil won, where injustice reigned triumphant, where oppression rules.
To truly appreciate the full depth of Easter, we need to take space to sit with the bitter pain of Holy Saturday, to sit at the tomb where Jesus lays, to face our own tombs.
We need to stay a while with the disciples, to hear the cry of mother Mary as her baby boy lays in the tomb. I think as we do so, we can find Holy Saturday teaching us great things.
First it shows us the value of sitting with our own experience of pain and forsakenness, when so often we talk as if our experience of pain, of anguish, of uncertainty, and of doubt are signs that we have lost our way, that we have gone down the wrong road.
Holy Saturday teaches us that trying to reach Easter, new beginning, and hope before we - like Jesus - sit in the midst of death, of grief, of loss, of terror, and total abandonment can mean not yet being ready. Facing and admitting our pain and heartache is part and parcel of the call of Holy Saturday.
On Holy Saturday, Jesus takes into God’s self the experience of death, of abandonment, of guilt and of hell. On this day, as one of us, God experiences what it means to be totally abandoned by God. This means in the heart of our experiences of grief, of terror and abandonment, we are not alone though, as Jesus did on the cross, we do feel abandoned in those moments.
This is why as he died Jesus cries out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” and why Christian mystics have talked about the need to face the dark night of the soul.
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