After a midnight thunderstorm roused me from sleep—and my Australian shepherd companion River, too, with wild barks—this Holy Saturday morning dawned quietly and with thick clouds. Birds were singing, though in muted tones, as River and I walked through our shoreline neighborhood before most others were even stirring in their houses; a rabbit hopped across the sidewalk in front of us.
This is one of my favorite days on the Christian calendar, though I can’t quite articulate the reasons why with much precision. I’m tempted to suppose its restfulness appeals to me after a thick week of liturgical intensity—but I still haven’t finished my Easter sermon, and I need to rehearse some of the ancient chants for the morning, and of course the altar guild will be cleaning the sanctuary and arranging lilies around the Table and Font–perhaps accompanied by the organist’s own rehearsals with the choir–while the hospitality brigade bakes or shops for festive refreshments in the parish hall.
Likewise Jesus, who was also not truly “resting” on this day, at least according to some traditions, and even though he was ostensibly confined to a rock-hewn tomb. This is the day—between Crucifixion and Resurrection—when Jesus “harrows Hell.”
Western Christianity seems content to leave such matters to a single phrase in the Apostles’ Creed: after declaring that Jesus was “crucified, died and was buried,” the creed then notes that “he descended into hell.” Eastern Orthodox Christians pull out all the theatrical stops to make this point (and I’m glad they do); Jesus doesn’t merely “descend” into the nether realms but topples the gates of Satan’s domain, liberating all those who had been held captive there by “sin, death, and the devil,” that “unholy Trinity,” as Martin Luther called them.
One of my favorite icons is of this very moment, with Jesus portrayed as trampling those hellish gates underfoot and literally yanking Adam and Eve from their tombs. I take great delight in just how startled those first humans appear to be by this arrival of Life. I also appreciate the crushing of those gates: Jesus not only rescues those who had been there, no one will ever go there again, not a single one; the realm of “sin, death, and the devil” has been destroyed, forever.
Visual and literary artist Jan Richardson invites something similar in a Lenten poem, one that blesses God “in whom nothing is wasted.” Nothing is tossed aside or thrown away—every “remnant, scrap, and shred” returns to God.
Poet and Anglican priest Malcolm Guite, in his collection of sonnets for the Christian year, focuses his attention instead on the tender care of a dead body on this day, the anointing of “ruined flesh” and the “kissing of wounds.” I’m grateful for this reminder that rest still matters—this is the Sabbath day, after all—and even with Hell to harrow, there must be space for renewal. Even so, and especially so, Guite weaves with the same thread as Richardson, insisting that “Love is never lost,” even at the grave—“harrowing” is replaced with “sowing” in Guite’s vision and love is the seed that shall not fail to sprout.
Here, then, an offering for this Holy Saturday from Malcolm Guite:
Here at the centre everything is still,
Before the stir and movement of our grief
That bears its pain and rhythm, ritual,
Beautiful useless gestures of relief.
So they anoint the skin that cannot feel
And soothe his ruined flesh with tender care,
Kissing the wounds they know they cannot heal,
With incense scenting only empty air.
He blesses every love that weeps and grieves,
And makes our grief the pangs of a new birth.
The love that’s poured in silence at old graves,
Renewing flowers, tending the bare earth,
Is never lost. In him all love is found
And sown with him, a seed in the rich ground.
