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Holy Saturday Reflections. April 11 2020

Only one page, one page 283, in our Prayer Book is set aside for a brief liturgy on Holy Saturday; the day between Good Friday and Easter Day. I’ve long considered almost a mission to reinstate the spiritual significance, the resonance of Holy Saturday in our lives… individually, as churches and now (so real) as a nation and global community.

The utter, wretched pathos of Good Friday is past; the exhilarating triumph of Easter is yet to be… and meanwhile we confront the ennui, boredom, tedium of Holy Saturday. We feel exhausted, frazzled, frayed by the roller-coaster events of the Gospel leading to Palm Sunday and then the inexorable stride towards Good Friday.

I have an idea, based on personal and pastoral experience, that much of our lives is spent in Holy Saturday mode… we manage, by and large, to escape heart-wrenching suffering but neither do we find ourselves constantly enjoying wild and frenzied moments of delight.

For those waiting for results of Covid-19 test, it is a Holy Saturday experience.

For those connected to ventilators and the like, the daily slow measure is a Holy Saturday experience.

My insistence on observing the Holy Saturday liturgy has rarely been popular with church floral designers and devout, hard-working members of altar guilds and altar societies; for a while my beloved wife Wendy coordinated the floral design of the massive sanctuary of Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square – there were sometimes intent discussions between us about the timing of the liturgy. People had to get busy, they had to get things done and then preparations for an Easter Vigil ate into an already truncated Holy Saturday experience. I’ve felt at times like an ecclesiastical King Canute trying to hold back the busyness and distractions that make difficult the observance of a Holy Saturday.

Only one page, one page, in our Prayer Book but it presents a liturgical reminder of the Holy Saturday experience in our lives.

Before I finish with a reading of Psalm 130, part of the liturgy, I share with you a few quotations about Holy Saturday that I have gathered over the years…

“On Holy Saturday I do my best to live in that place, that wax-crayon place of trust and waiting. Of accepting what I cannot know. Of mourning what needs to be mourned. Of accepting what needs to be accepted. Of hoping for what seems impossible.”

“Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep.”

“Just as when we were children, we were afraid to be alone in the dark and could only be assured by the presence of someone who loved us. Well this is exactly what happened on Holy Saturday, the voice of God resounded in the realm of death. The unimaginable occurred; name, love penetrated Hell.”

18 For Christ was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison” (I Peter 3). “He descended to the dead…”

Finally a reading of Psalm 130 translated into vigorous style in the Message Bible Translation

1-2 Help, GOD—the bottom has fallen out of my life!
Master, hear my cry for help!
Listen hard! Open your ears!
Listen to my cries for mercy.
3-4 If you, GOD, kept records on wrongdoings,
who would stand a chance?
As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit,
and that’s why you’re worshiped.
5-6 I pray to GOD—my life a prayer—
and wait for what he’ll say and do.
My life’s on the line before God, my Lord,
waiting and watching till morning,
waiting and watching till morning.
7-8 O Israel, wait and watch for GOD—
with GOD’s arrival comes love,
with GOD’s arrival comes generous redemption.
No doubt about it—he’ll redeem Israel,
buy back Israel from captivity to sin.