What is Holy Saturday?

Let us take a moment. Let us step away from the noise and haste of our world, a world that so often leaves us feeling weary and disheartened.¹ Let us enter into a different kind of time, into a powerful and sacred pause. Let us enter into the great silence of Holy Saturday.²

This is the day the world held its breath. It is a day often overlooked, sandwiched between the dark sorrow of Good Friday and the brilliant joy of Easter Sunday.⁴ We might be tempted to rush past it, to treat it as an empty space, a forgotten interlude. But this day is not empty. It is full. It is pregnant with meaning, like a seed resting in the dark earth, preparing to burst forth with new life.⁶ Holy Saturday is the day of God’s silence. And this silence is not one of absence of a deep, mysterious, and transformative love.⁸

This is the sacred space of waiting. It is the day that teaches our hearts the most difficult and beautiful lessons: how to hope when all seems lost, how to find God’s presence in the quiet, and how to trust that even in the deepest darkness of the tomb, God is preparing a new and surprising dawn for us all.⁷ Let us walk this path together, and let us not be afraid of the silence. Let us listen to what it has to say to our hearts.

What Is This Day of Silence We Call Holy Saturday?

To understand this holy day, we must first see where it rests in the heart of our faith. Holy Saturday is the day between Good Friday, when we recall the Crucifixion of our Lord, and Easter Sunday, when we celebrate His Resurrection.¹¹ It is the final, quiet day of the Holy Triduum, the three most sacred days of our liturgical year, and it marks the end of the Lenten season.¹²

The Church has given this day many names, and each one is like a small candle that illuminates a different corner of its powerful mystery. It is called Holy Saturday (Sabbatum Sanctum in Latin), marking its sacred character.¹³ It is called the

Great Sabbath, connecting it to the seventh day of creation when God rested from His work, just as Christ now rests from His work of redemption in the tomb.¹⁴ It is known as

Easter Eve, for it is the watchful night before the great feast of the Resurrection.¹¹ In some traditions, it has been called

Black Saturday, a name that speaks of the deep sorrow and mourning for the dead Lord, or Low Saturday, reflecting the ceasing of all celebration.¹¹ Yet, it is also called the

Saturday of Light or Joyous Saturday, especially in Eastern traditions, because it already holds the promise of the light that is about to break forth.¹³

This richness of names points to a beautiful truth: this day is too deep to be captured by a single word. It holds many realities at once. It is a day of sorrow that is also a day of hope. It is a day of rest that is also a day of hidden, powerful action. It is a day of silence that is also a day of powerful proclamation. This means that, in our own hearts, there is no single “correct” way to feel. We can feel the ache of loss, the quiet peace of waiting, and the small, flickering flame of hope, all at the same time. The in her wisdom, gives us space for all of it.

The primary significance of Holy Saturday is to commemorate the time when the body of Jesus rested in the tomb.¹⁴ It is a day for solemn reflection, for prayer, and for fasting.¹⁸ Across the world, Catholic churches are stark and bare. The altars are stripped, the holy water fonts are empty, and the tabernacle, where the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is normally reserved, stands open and empty.¹⁴ The Mass is not celebrated during the day.¹⁸ This creates a powerful atmosphere of suspended activity, an emptiness that mirrors the shock and desolation of Jesus’s first followers after He was taken from them.¹⁷ The in a symbolic way, sits at the Lord’s tomb, meditating on His Passion and His death, and waiting.¹⁸

Here we find the day’s great duality. It is a continuation of the sorrow of Good Friday, a time to grieve alongside Mary and the disciples.¹¹ Yet, at the same time, it is filled with a quiet, powerful anticipation for the joy of Easter.²⁰ It is the sacred bridge that connects the despair of death to the triumph of life, the silence of the tomb to the first alleluia of the Resurrection.¹⁹

What Happened on That Dark Saturday?

If we open the Gospels to read what happened on that first Holy Saturday, we are met with a powerful silence. The scriptures, so full of the words and actions of Jesus, say very little about this day.²¹ And this silence is deeply major. It is the silence of a world that has lost its Word, the silence of grief, of waiting, of uncertainty.

The main activities the Bible does record are centered around two places: the homes of the disciples and the tomb of Jesus. The faithful women, including Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, had followed Joseph of Arimathea and watched as he lovingly wrapped Jesus’s body in linen and laid it in his own new tomb.²³ Their hearts, full of love and sorrow, urged them to complete the burial rites. They went home to prepare spices and ointments to anoint His body. But their work was cut short. As the sun set on Friday, the Sabbath began, and so, the Gospel of Luke tells us, “they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment” (Luke 23:56).²² Imagine this moment. Their love for Jesus was so great, yet they held it in tension with their faithfulness to God’s law. Their waiting was not passive; it was an act of obedient love.

Meanwhile, another group was also active their actions were born not of love of fear. The chief priests and Pharisees, the very men who had demanded Jesus’s death, ironically broke their own strict Sabbath laws to go to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.²⁴ They remembered Jesus’s promise: “After three days I will rise again” (Matthew 27:63).²⁶ Terrified that the disciples might steal the body and claim a resurrection, they asked for a guard. Pilate granted their request, and they went to the tomb, sealed the great stone, and posted soldiers to watch over it.²⁷

This contrast is powerful. The powerful religious leaders, driven by fear, used human means—a stone, a seal, a Roman guard—to try to control the situation. They were trying, as one writer puts it, to “secure the tomb and keep the power of resurrection inside”.²⁴ Their actions were a frantic attempt to suppress the divine promise. On the other hand, the powerless followers of Jesus, especially the women, were forced into stillness. Yet their waiting was an act of powerful faith. In preparing the spices, they were acting on the hope of a future, a future where their love for Jesus could still be expressed, even if they did not understand how. Their humble faithfulness, not the leaders’ worldly power, is what prepared them to be the first to hear the news of the Resurrection. This teaches our hearts a beautiful lesson: our own anxious efforts to control our lives are often rooted in fear and are ultimately powerless before God’s plan. True spiritual strength is so often found in the quiet, faithful waiting that makes space for God to act in ways we could never imagine. Nothing, no stone and no guard, can stop the salvation God wills for us.²⁴

As we imagine that first dark Saturday, let us try to enter the hearts of the disciples. They were scattered, hiding behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews” (John 20:19).²⁵ Everything they had hoped for seemed to be lost. The man they believed was the Messiah, their friend and Lord, was dead.⁴ They must have felt a storm of emotions: shock, grief, confusion, perhaps even anger at Judas for his betrayal and at themselves for their own cowardice.²⁸ This was their “dark night of the soul,” a time of utter desolation.²⁶

Yet in this darkness, one light remained steady. Christian tradition has always held that Although the faith of the apostles wavered, the heart of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, remained a beacon of hope.³ She who had treasured all these things in her heart, she who stood faithfully at the foot of the cross, now kept a silent, prayerful vigil. She waited. She did not despair. She held onto the promise. In this, Mary becomes the perfect icon for the Church on Holy Saturday, teaching us how to wait in faith and love, even when God is silent.⁸

What Does It Mean That Jesus “Descended into Hell”?

In the heart of the great silence of Holy Saturday lies one of the most powerful and mysterious articles of our faith. In the Apostles’ Creed, which Christians have recited for centuries, we profess that after Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried, “he descended into hell”.²⁹ This phrase can be startling it is filled with a message of incredible hope.

We must understand what this “hell” was. The Creed does not mean that Jesus descended into the place of eternal punishment for the damned, which is sometimes called Gehenna.¹³ Rather, the word used here refers to the realm of the dead, the state of all those, both righteous and unrighteous, who had died before Christ’s coming. In the Old Testament, this place was called

Sheol in Hebrew, and in the New Testament, Hades in Greek.³² It was a place of shadows, a waiting place, deprived of the vision of God.¹³

Jesus’s journey into this realm was not one of punishment of ultimate solidarity and triumph.³¹ His love is so immense, so relentless, that it leaves no one behind. He entered fully into the human condition, and that includes the experience of death itself. His descent was the final step in His emptying of Himself, His

kenosis, showing that there is no place so dark, no corner of human suffering so desolate, that His love cannot reach it.²¹ He went to find the lost sheep, even in the land of the dead.²

Although the Bible does not give a single, detailed account of this event, the Church has long seen it alluded to in several key passages. Saint Peter tells us that Christ, “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,” went and “made a proclamation to the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:18-19).³⁰ The Letter to the Ephesians says that before He ascended, “he also descended into the lower parts of the earth” (Ephesians 4:9).³⁰ And Jesus himself compared His time in the tomb to Jonah’s time “in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).³²

What did He do there? He went as a victorious king. This event is often called the “Harrowing of Hell,” an old term that means to plunder or raid.³¹ Jesus descended to proclaim His victory over sin and death to all creation, to disarm the powers of darkness, and to set the captives free.³¹ The core of this belief is that Jesus went to “free the just who had gone before him” (Catechism of the Catholic 633).¹³

The ancient icons and homilies of the Church paint a beautiful picture of this moment. They show Christ, radiant in light, breaking down the very gates of Hades. He is seen taking Adam and Eve by the hand, pulling them from their tombs, and with them, all the righteous souls of the Old Testament—Abraham, Moses, David, John the Baptist—who had awaited their Savior in hope.³⁵ He did not just open the doors of paradise; He trampled them down with His own death, defeating death from within.³⁵

This mystery reveals something extraordinary about the story of our salvation. The descent into the realm of the dead is at once the lowest point of Christ’s humiliation and the very first moment of His glorious exaltation. By entering “the state of the dead” 32, He fully embraced our human condition. But He did not remain there as a victim. He acted as a King. He proclaimed His victory, claimed the “keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18) 24, and began His triumphant return to the Father, bringing the liberated souls with Him.

This prevents us from ever seeing Holy Saturday as a mere empty pause. It was a day of tremendous, though hidden, divine action. Although the world above was still and silent, the greatest rescue mission in all of history was taking place in the depths. It is a powerful reminder to us that God is always at work, especially when He seems most absent, turning our deepest sorrows into the beginning of our greatest victories.

How Does the Catholic Church Keep Watch on This Holy Night?

On this most sacred night, the Catholic Church does not sleep. She keeps watch. The Easter Vigil, celebrated in the holy darkness between sunset on Saturday and sunrise on Sunday, is the “mother of all holy vigils”.⁴⁰ It is the most important, solemn, and joyful liturgy of the entire year, because it is the first official celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord.⁴² It is not a service about Holy Saturday; it is the very beginning of Easter.

The entire liturgy is a powerful journey that moves from powerful darkness to glorious light, symbolizing Christ’s passage from death to life and our own passage from the darkness of sin to the light of grace.⁴⁴ The Vigil is structured in four beautiful parts, each rich with meaning that speaks to the depths of our hearts.

How Do Our Brothers and Sisters in Other Traditions Honor This Day?

The mystery of Holy Saturday is so deep that it has found expression in a beautiful variety of traditions across the Christian world. Although the rituals may differ, the heart of the observance remains the same: a solemn, hopeful waiting for the Lord. Let us look with love and respect at how our brothers and sisters in other Christian families honor this sacred day.

The Eastern Orthodox “Great and Holy Sabbath”

For our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters, this day is known as the Great and Holy Sabbath.¹⁴ This name is very important, as it mystically connects Christ’s rest in the tomb with God’s rest on the seventh day of creation.¹⁵ For them, the central theological theme of the day is Christ’s triumphant descent into Hades—His victory over death from within.⁵³ Their services are filled with powerful symbolism and ancient beauty.

On Friday evening, they celebrate the Matins of Holy Saturday, a service that has the character of a funeral for Christ. The service takes place around the Epitaphios, a beautifully embroidered cloth icon depicting the body of the entombed Christ, which has been placed on a decorated “tomb” in the center of the church.¹⁵ The faithful chant psalms and beautiful hymns of lamentation the mood is not one of despair. It is one of watchful expectation, knowing that this death will conquer death.¹⁵

On Saturday morning or afternoon, they celebrate a Vesperal Divine Liturgy, often called the “First Resurrection” service.¹⁴ This liturgy marks a dramatic shift in atmosphere from sorrow to joy. At a certain point in the service, the dark vestments of the clergy are changed to brilliant white ones.¹⁵ Then, in a moment of powerful symbolism, the priest walks through the church scattering bay leaves and flower petals. This act represents the shattering of the gates of hell and Christ’s triumphant victory over death.¹⁴ The entire church is filled with the signs of life and victory, even Although the

Epitaphios remains in the tomb, a visual reminder that the Resurrection is proclaimed even from the depths of the grave.

Protestant Traditions of Waiting and Reflection

Among our Protestant brothers and sisters, we also see a spectrum of observance, ranging from formal liturgies to more personal, thematic reflections.

In liturgical traditions like the Anglican and Lutheran Churches, Holy Saturday is often observed in ways similar to the Catholic tradition. Many parishes hold an Easter Vigil service after nightfall.¹⁴ The Anglican

Book of Common Prayer refers to the day as “Easter Even,” emphasizing its role as the night before the feast.¹⁴ A unique custom in some Lutheran churches is the use of black paraments to cover the altar, a stark symbol of mourning for the crucified Lord.¹⁴

Methodist churches place a strong emphasis on Holy Saturday as a day of quiet prayer, fasting, and deep reflection.⁵⁶ Resources from

The United Methodist Book of Worship and other official bodies guide congregations to “wait with the women at the Lord’s tomb”.⁵⁶ Their services for this day are often simple and stark, consisting of Scripture readings (often from Job, the Psalms, 1 Peter, and Matthew’s account of the burial), periods of powerful silence, and prayers that embrace the feeling of being in an “in-between” space.⁵⁶ The goal is not to rush past the silence but to enter into it, trusting that God is present even when He is not seen or heard.⁵

Many Baptist churches, which often do not follow a formal liturgical calendar, still engage deeply with the meaning of Holy Saturday.⁶¹ Although they may not hold a specific service for the day itself, pastors and writers encourage their communities to use the day for personal and family devotion.⁶³ It is seen as a crucial time to reflect on the gravity of the cross and the reality of sin, which makes the joy of Easter Sunday all the more powerful and meaningful.²⁶ It is a day to lament, to wait patiently on God’s promises, and to prepare the heart for the celebration to come.⁶⁵

This beautiful diversity shows us that the Holy Spirit works in many ways. Whether through the ancient, multi-sensory rituals of the East, the solemn vigils of the Catholic and liturgical Protestant West, or the quiet, personal heart-preparation found in Methodist and Baptist communities, the core spiritual posture is the same. It is a day for the entire Christian family to stand together in solemn, hopeful waiting for the Lord.

Why Is the Silence of Holy Saturday a Gift for Our Souls?

Our world is so often a noisy place. It is filled with distractions, with demands for our attention, with the constant pressure for immediate answers and quick results.⁶⁶ In the midst of all this, Holy Saturday comes to us as a radical and precious gift: the gift of silence.⁵⁸

This is not an empty silence. It is not the silence of absence. It is a “great and holy silence,” a sacred stillness where God is profoundly at work.² We must not think that because God is silent, He is absent or indifferent. On this day, as one of my predecessors taught, God is silent it is a silence born of love. It is a silence of solidarity with all who have ever felt abandoned, a silence that reaches into the deepest emptiness of the human heart.⁸ It is in this holy quiet that our hearts can be prepared to hear the news of the Resurrection. It is in our own moments of silence that God can speak to us in a language deeper than words.⁶⁶

The stillness of Holy Saturday gives us permission to be honest. It gives us space to grieve. So often, we feel we must rush past our sorrows, put on a brave face, and find a quick solution. But this day tells us it is okay to mourn.²⁰ It creates a safe space to sit with our “big feelings”—our disappointments, our fears, our losses—without needing to fix them immediately.⁶⁹ It is the one day in the year when the Church allows us to acknowledge that sometimes, in our lives, it truly feels like “darkness has won”.¹⁰ It gives us the space to lament that reality honestly before God, just as the disciples did.

But this silence is not just for looking back in sorrow; it is for looking forward in hope. It is like the quiet of a seed buried in the dark soil, or a child resting in its mother’s womb.⁶ On the outside, nothing appears to be happening. But on the inside, a miracle is taking place. The silence of Holy Saturday is a silence pregnant with potential, a waiting that is not empty but is preparing for an explosion of new life. It is in this quiet waiting that our faith is purified and our hope is made strong.⁷²

If we rush from the cross of Good Friday straight to the empty tomb of Easter Sunday, we risk diminishing the power of both. We might be tempted to see the Resurrection as a kind of magic trick, a simple happy ending to a sad story. But it is so much more than that. It is a world-shattering victory, a conquest won from the inside out. The silence of Holy Saturday forces us to sit with the full weight of the cross and the cold reality of the tomb. It allows the “dreadful interval before hope returned” 36 to truly sink into our souls. By allowing ourselves to experience the depth of the darkness, the light of Easter morning becomes infinitely more brilliant, more surprising, more joyous. The silence is not a detour on the path to Easter; it is an essential part of the journey.

How Can We Live Holy Saturday in Our Own “In-Between” Times?

Holy Saturday is not just a day on the Church’s calendar that comes once a year. It is a spiritual reality that we all know in our own lives.⁶⁹ We all have our “Holy Saturday” moments. We all know what it is like to live in the “in-between.”

It is the time between a prayer and its answer. It is the time between a frightening diagnosis and the news of healing. It is the time between a painful loss and the beginning of a new chapter. It is the space between a breakdown and a breakthrough.⁵ These are the times when our dreams seem to be sealed behind a heavy stone, when God seems silent, and when we, like the disciples, are tempted to feel confused, afraid, and alone.

In these moments, we can learn from the stories of others who have waited in faith. Think of the wife and mother who, after her husband’s difficult surgery and the sudden death of her father, felt abandoned by God but learned to cling to Him in the darkness, waiting for a new dawn.⁷⁵ Think of the young novice in a convent, sitting by the “tomb” of her old life, missing her family and yet learning to trust that the emptiness holds the promise of something new.⁷⁶ Think of the young people, Peyton and Maria, who waited through misunderstanding and spiritual struggle to be welcomed into the full life of the Church at the Easter Vigil, their longing only making the eventual gift more precious.⁷⁸ Think of the therapist who sees that so many people who come to her are living in these “Holy Saturday moments,” waiting in their grief and anxiety for a breakthrough that seems so far away.⁶⁹

These stories, and our own, teach us a spirituality of waiting. The Christian tradition tells us that “waiting on the Lord” is not a passive, empty state. It is an active spiritual posture.⁷⁹ It is a time for

trust, when we cling to God’s faithfulness even when we cannot see the path ahead.⁸¹ It is a time for

prayer, when we cry out to God from the depths of our hearts, knowing that He hears us even in His silence.⁸¹ It is a time for

patience, when we learn that God’s timing is not always our own, and that He uses the period of waiting to shape and refine our character, to make us more like His Son.⁸³ And above all, it is a time for

hope, when we dare to believe that God is at work in the darkness, preparing a new and unexpected dawn for us.¹⁰

Perhaps we can see our most difficult, “in-between” moments in a new light. They are not punishments. They are not signs that God has forgotten us. They are invitations. They are invitations into what the wise have called “God’s school of waiting” 83, and Holy Saturday is the great classroom in this school. It is here that we learn that true Christian hope is not the absence of doubt or pain. Hope is the courageous choice to trust God in the very midst of our questions and our sorrow. Our personal Holy Saturdays, as painful as they may be, are sacred spaces where our faith can grow deeper and stronger than ever before.

Waiting for the Dawn, Clinging to Hope

And so, our journey through the great silence brings us to the edge of the dawn. The Resurrection of Jesus is God’s definitive, world-changing answer to the silence of the tomb. It is the ultimate proof that love is stronger than death, that light is stronger than darkness, and that our hope in God will never, ever disappoint us.⁸⁵

Christian hope is not the same as simple optimism. It is not just a vague wish that things will turn out for the best.⁸⁷ Hope is a theological virtue. This means it is a gift that comes directly from God, a gift we must welcome into our hearts and actively cultivate.⁸⁹ It is the firm and certain trust that God is faithful to His promises, a trust that is anchored in the reality of the Risen Christ.⁸⁸

On this holy night, as we keep watch, let us not be afraid of the tombstones that we find in our own lives. There is the stone of discouragement, which makes us feel that everything is going badly and that we have no future.⁹¹ There is the stone of sin, which seals our hearts and blocks God’s light from entering.⁹¹ There are the stones of our fears, our selfishness, our indifference, and our regrets, which imprison us and stifle life.⁹²

Tonight, the Gospel tells us that the great stone of the tomb was rolled away. It was rolled away by the Lord, the God of the impossible, who came to overturn our every disappointment.⁹¹ He is the one who opens our tombs, so that hope may be born in us ever anew.⁹²

Let us, then, lift our eyes to Him! Let us welcome Jesus, the God of life, into our hearts and say “yes” to Him once more. Then no stone will block our hearts, no tomb will suppress our joy, no failure will condemn us to despair.⁹² We are called to be an Easter people, messengers of life in a time of death.⁷ We are called to carry the small, steady flame of hope that was kindled in the darkness of this Vigil and bring it to a world that so desperately needs its light.

Sister, brother, let your heart burst with jubilation on this holy night! Together, let us sing of Jesus’ resurrection. Let us tell everyone, with our lives and with our words, the good news that astounded the women at the tomb and changed history forever. He is not here, in the place of death. He is alive; he is risen!.⁹²

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