The Profound Truth of Holy Saturday

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

I stepped out onto the deck just before four this morning to a deep and blessed silence. The traffic we often hear from the nearby highway had not yet begun. Not a single bird was singing, though I knew it wouldn’t be long. The sky held a just-beyond-full moon, with a smattering of stars. Nothing was moving. Yesterday’s winds had died. It felt like a vacuum.

I waited and I listened. Then I remembered. It is Holy Saturday. The day in between. A day of true liminality, filling the space between life and death. Or in this case, death and life. For me, it is a most mysterious day of the Christian year. The tomb is not empty. What do we do with that?

Honestly, I think that we who have followed and planned for the liturgical year have missed the boat on this one. Putting all our energy into a stirring Palm Sunday, a rich Maundy Thursday, an often excruciating Good Friday, and a trimphant Easter Sunday, Saturday has often gone by unnoted and unnoticed.

I can almost hear my clergy colleagues moan – “What does she want us to do, another over the top liturgy to plan and execute?” Isn’t there enough exhaustion at the end of these days? My baby sister who is married to an Episcopal priest calls this time “Holy Hell Week,” and though some may be scandalized, most of us understand. As I wrote on Thursday, we are moving through the rapids with little down time to float.

So, how have we missed the boat on this day? We have missed honoring the profound truths of the tomb on Holy Saturday. That death is real and a part of the Christian, the human, story. That silence is not to be avoided. That the deep and the dark can be the most fertile place for our our spirits to grow. That a rising not only takes a dying, but a resting in the unknown. The tomb involves the ultimate letting go, there is nothing more to do, but there is still a power that can be working on our transformation. But to get there, everything that is familiar to us must die. All that we love needs to be let go. The tomb is the cold, hard reality that all of us must enter before having any glimpse of new light.

I have spent a good deal of my life running away from various tombs, various endings, never realizing that they were invitations to deep rest, silence, and transformation. The three months of silence that I was planning for in retirement before my health issues appeared may have been an attempt to reverse this – to run toward the silent and tansforming tomb instead of away. But perhaps it is the job of life to take us to them, our job to receive when our time is at hand.

This year, I will practice Holy Saturday as a day for receiving the dark mysterious and unknown. Perhaps I will take a walk in Grove Cemetary in communion with all the spirits I have loved there. I will try not to run away from the death that feeds so much of life. For indeed, we do have a God of both.