“O Giver of Life,” as we anticipate Your exit from the Tomb in the great silence of today, “Christ our God, glory to You!” (Dear Friends, I am taking a 2-week break from my usual posts and podcasts. This is why our icon of the feast of the Resurrection depicts this day, Holy Saturday, or Christ’s victorious descent into Hades. Because we know that the Lord of the Sabbath is “working” even as “all mortal flesh” is silent in the face of His horrifying death: “My Father is working still,” He told us on another Saturday, “and I am working.” (Jn 5: 17)Īnd so it is on this Great and Holy Saturday, when the Source of Life descends into death and hell, not as one defeated, but as Victor as One Whom “death could not hold.” (Acts 2: 24) He “slays hell” already today, and brings new life, in Him, to those who were stuck there. On Holy Saturday, Cardinal Martini affirms:in the disciples of Jesus we recognize the confusion and the fears that characterize our lives as believers (especially during this Covid-19).

For Joseph of Arimathea and the women who had seen “how his body was laid,” and now, on the Sabbath, “rested according to the commandment” (Lk 23: 56), it was a day of great mourning and buried hope.įor us, however, today’s “silence” is more like the calm before a storm. The great “silence” of Holy Saturday, when the God-Man lies in the tomb, is different for all those involved.

“ When You did descend to death, O Life Immortal, / You did slay hell with the splendor of Your Godhead, / And when from the depths You did raise the dead, / All the Powers of Heaven cried out, / O Giver of Life, Christ our God, glory to You!” (Troparion-hymn of Holy & Great Saturday)

Holy saturday morning reflection