Holy Saturday - POSTSCRIPT

Post Script.

Holy Saturday is not Easter Sunday
- the DESCENT INTO HELL.

Hippolytus, (C4), was as clear as the women, NOT going to the tomb before the end of the Sabbath, when he continued the tradition, “Many of the just, proclaiming the Good News and prophesying were awaiting him who was to become by his resurrection the first born from the dead. And so, to save all members of the human race, whether they lived before the law, under the law, or after his own coming, Christ DWELT THREE DAYS BENEATH THE EARTH.

I was not surprised in the pastoral log jam of Saturday/Sunday Masses to find an excellent Homily on Holy Saturday was to be found NOT on the Saturday but on the SUNDAY Easter Vigil.

A Holy Saturday Homily from the Dominican Website, Dublin, although miscued to the Sunday Easter Vigil, seems to express very well some of the Holy Saturday experience.
This is another example of the progressive foreshortening of Holy Saturday and the precipitating of the Easter-Vigil. Monasteries and religious house seem to better attuned to the Blessing of the Easter Fire to coincide with the Sunday Dawn

Our thanks to the Dominican Fathers for this Homily. (Their Website, “Today’s Good News” has been consistently Biblical and theological in its commentary on the Lectern Gospel of the day).

22 March [Easter Vigil Mass] Mt 28:1-10
“After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

There is no Eucharist of Holy Saturday. It is the only day of the year when Mass is not celebrated. The altars are stripped bare, tabernacles lie open and empty – an extraordinarily powerful symbol for Catholics. The whole Church is one with Christ in his death. It is necessary to experience this. We have to allow ourselves experience sadness and loss. The Liturgy is a wise teacher.

However, piety immediately negates the power of the empty tabernacle by setting up an altar of repose, much more elaborately decorated with flowers and candles than the high altar ever was. We find it hard to live even for a day with anything that seems like emptiness.

George Steiner, among others, remarked that our world around us today is a kind of prolonged Holy Saturday: the age between Friday and Sunday, between defeat and hope. Today, of all days, the Christian heart feels the darkness of the world, and allows itself to look at the darkness in itself.

The emptiness and darkness that we have allowed ourselves to feel will show us the light of Easter all the more brightly. In the darkness we rise for the Easter Vigil. Against a black sky we light the Easter fire. But this would be a forlorn gesture if Christ were not risen from the dead! Suddenly the Paschal candle is alight. Lumen Christi! – the light of Christ lightens our darkness. Exultet! – “Exult, all creation...! Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendour, radiant in the brightness of your King.... Darkness vanishes forever...! Let this place resound with joy, echoing the mighty song of all God's people!”

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