Holy Saturday

What do you do the day after the worst day of your life? Most of us remember the actual day when our lives fell apart: we found out a loved one died or we lost everything we worked for. On that day we knew that nothing would ever be the same, but we don’t quite know what this new reality will look like.

 And on the worst day of our lives, as horrible as it was, we often are able to reach out to others who seek to comfort us. But what happens the day after? What happens when the visitors have gone home, others grieving with us have decided they need to be alone, and we are left staring at the abyss of what is our “new” life. 

If Good Friday is hard, Holy Saturday is unbearable. It is the day where we are forced to begin the process of stepping into a version of life that we never wanted. 

The gospels talk a little about Holy Saturday: the preparation of Jesus’ body and resting for the Sabbath. But the emotions of Jesus’ friends and family are not described.

But we can imagine it. We can imagine the grief as they mourn the death of not only their loved one but their savior.  We can imagine the unbearable isolation, as they are united in their grief and yet feel so alone. 

As Christians living in the 21^st century, we have a bit of an advantage over those living in the first century. We know that Easter is just 24 hours away and so we often downplay Holy Saturday.

We view Holy Saturday as a liminal place and sort of a staging ground for the much more joyful and triumphant day of Easter.  But Jesus’ friends and family didn’t have that option. They didn’t know things would get better, they only knew death and destruction. They only knew that the Empire had won. 

I wonder how Mary spent Holy Saturday? Did she have any mementos from Jesus’ childhood that she held onto? Did she think back to angel Gabriel’s announcement of his birth? Did she feel betrayed, wondering how someone’s life, whose birth promised the ushering of a new world, ended in violence and death?

We may or may not understand the full depth of Mary’s sorrow, but most of us have experienced loss in our lives. And if we haven’t yet, we eventually will. And we can imagine the unbearable sorrow of Holy Saturday. We have hope that eventually God will make things right. 

That one day, the sharp edges of grief will be dulled. We have hope that death is not the end. But even in that hope, we still mourn. For most of us, our grief will last longer than three days and we will have to navigate weeks, months, and even years of Holy Saturdays. 

There is no shortcut to getting through Holy Saturday. Like Mary, we just have to get through it, putting one foot in front of the other. And for most of us, the joyfulness of Easter will be a long time coming. So we move forward, mourning, lamenting, and still holding onto the God who defeated death. 

Image: Black background, with a dove with its wings spread. Text: If Good Friday is hard, Holy Saturday is unbearable. It is the day where we are forced to begin the process of stepping into a version of life that we never wanted.