Holy Saturday precedes Easter Sunday, the greatest feast of the Christian liturgical calendar. The Latin liturgy is silent on this day of preparation. The altar stays unadorned and the tabernacle is empty. Eastern Christianity has a much more positive outlook on this apparent non-eventful day. The Byzantine rite celebrates the liturgy of Saint Basil for Holy Saturday morning. The priest heralds the resurrection while sprinkling on the people laurel leaves as an introduction to the Easter Vigil, which will commence in the evening.

Both the different liturgical worldviews offer an interesting and complementary perspective on the way Jesus lived his Holy Saturday. Holy Saturday commemorates Christ’s descent into Hell. On Good Friday Jesus dies away from the Holy Place, crucified and condemned to show his total solidarity with those who feel lost and abandoned.

Therefore, the silence and emptiness, which fill the space of Holy Saturday, project the latter as a much needed step in the revelation of the paschal mystery. The Father’s infinite patient mercy, as incarnated in Christ, is extended to those who are entrapped in desolation, abandonment and despair. According to Hans Urs von Balthasar, the eminent theologian who spoke a great deal about the mystery of Holy Saturday, Hell, being the most extreme space of utmost isolation and complete darkness, becomes the place in which Christ breaks into a situation of co-solitude on Holy Saturday. The greatest news for those who feel imprisoned in Hell is that they are no longer finally left by themselves but are accompanied by the God-forsaken Son of God. Darkness is shared by the One who will eventually resurrect!

Von Balthasar clarified this point when he writes: “Into this finality (of death) the dead Son descends, no longer acting in any way, but stripped by the cross of every power and initiative of his own, as one purely to be used, debased to mere matter, with a fully indifferent (corpse) obedience, incapable of any active solidarity - only thus is he right for any ‘sermon’ to the dead. He is (out of an ultimate love however) dead together with them. And exactly in that way he disturbs the absolute loneliness striven for by the sinner: the sinner, who wants to be ‘damned’ apart from God, finds God again in his loneliness, but God in the absolute weakness of love who unfathomably in the period of non-time enters into solidarity with those damning themselves”.

Thanks to Christ’s presence, Hell, the habitat of abandonment and despair, is definitely transformed into a Christological place, where the Father’s extreme mercy continues to save! As the prologue of Saint John’s Gospel states: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1, 5). The light of love goes into and clashes with the darkness of sin and death. As Balthasar says, “He (Christ) has death in his grip; he dominates, limits it and takes from it its sting”. Since this light is the light of infinite love, this meeting with the forces of darkness acts to augment Love, to glorify it, and to redeem what is the ultimate instance of man’s destiny.

Fully convinced of this reality, the contemplative and close associate of von Balthasar, Adrienne von Speyr, courageously affirmed that “the point of hell is not to kill love. The point of hell is to establish the kingdom of love.”

Our lives are deeply marked by moments of great distress, trauma, loneliness, despair, abandonment. Even in these Hellish experiences Christ is there to rescue us. “I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (John 28, 20).

Jesus I trust in you!

■ Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

San Ġwann