Saturday

 

Image: ‘Homeless Jesus’ by Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz, in front of Newman College Chapel in Parkville. 

Reflection on Holy Saturday for the pew notes at the Easter Vigil held at St Peter’s Eastern Hill, Melbourne, written by Philip Harvey

 When I worked at the theological library in Parkville, years ago, one of my reference jobs one time was to assist a postgraduate student on research enquiries about her chosen subject of Holy Saturday. She regularly wore a tee-shirt she’d had made bearing the message in large letters: “Don’t Ask! The Thesis Is Hell.” This livened things up and was fair warning that she meant business. 

One benefit of being a research librarian is that, out of necessity, you can get to learn almost as much about the subject as the researcher. For example, what is Holy Saturday? From experience, it is the great lull between the shock and dismay of Friday and the glory of Sunday. It is a gentle autumn day in Melbourne. However, in terms of the prayerful attention to the Passion it is a time of rest and reflection. We live in that place and time, possibly not for the last time, where It is Finished. Judged from personal and shared experience, we each have our own thesis about Holy Saturday. 

Attractive and helpful, I think, is the ancient reminder that it is the sabbath, wherein Christ is laid to rest after a week of extreme suffering. The command to keep that day holy is being kept in a very complete way. Living with the dead is something we do more frequently than we imagine, we speak their words and repeat their rituals, and here is a day in the calendar set aside for that purpose. It is a case of doing something simply by doing nothing. 

Within tradition, then, there is the descent of Christ into Hell. We sometimes sing about this in the creed, depending on which creed. Hell is a subject no one wants to talk about these days, even when it’s happening to them every day, or is plain as day. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Certainly, the overcoming of evil is one express meaning of the Descent and the lead of Christ on Holy Saturday is an example we are being told to pay witness to. 

The early English term for this was the Harrowing of Hell. This is the understanding, put at its Wikipedia simplest, that “in triumphant descent, Christ brought salvation to the souls held captive there since the beginning of the world.” A thesis is expected to explain, but sometimes a thesis must concede there are things outside human explanation. Sometimes all we can do is send a researcher in the right direction. 

That said, Holy Saturday is the lead in to the Easter Vigil. An autumn day may be spent convivially arranging flowers, polishing brass, practising joyous hymns, and designing the Paschal candle for the immense service of light and water, history and presence, that begins Easter Day. Shopping can involve plans for large Sunday meals and a trolley load of chocolate. Or we may like to celebrate  quietly, yet in dozens of small ways, this day when we ready ourselves again for the utterly unexpected.