Silence...

Holy Saturday demands total involvement from every disciple of our Lord, who has walked the Lenten journey. And I do not mean by that the Easter Vigil. Holy Saturday is essential for anyone to know the joy of Easter and again I do not mean the Easter Vigil. I mean the hours from the end of our contemplating together the Passion and Death of Our Lord yesterday afternoon at the ninth hour when the sky turned into darkness, until the hour when we come to receive as a revealing of our risen Lord a candle’s gentle ray.

It is a great pity that Holy Saturday, first of all, is wrongly called Easter Saturday, and secondly that we then let it just be a day of practical preparation for the Vigil. Instead it is the day of “he descended into hell.” There is no public worship this day, because it is the day when the Word of God was silenced. The day is meant to be silent. It is the day of this final proclamation that the Word really has become flesh and dwelt among us sinners; the day of "he descended into hell." 

Receive these words spoken by Pope Benedict standing before the Shrine revered in Turin:

“The unthinkable has happened: Love has penetrated into hell: so that now in the extreme darkness of that human isolation we can hear a voice that calls us and find a hand that takes hold of us and leads us out. Even in the hour of extreme solitude we are never alone.” 

We cannot understand the resurrection unless we ponder from where he rises: because he is selfless, he alone can enter into our personal hells, join us in the farthest countries we have chosen, where we have found ourselves feeding swine and eating the pig swill. 

This day needs silence in abundance; the day when we do not begin by trying to rise up, but first allow the Lord to descend into our hell; join us there; make all its darkness, fears, shame, guilt his very own, and then raise us up, not with blazing storm lanterns, but as a candle’s gentle ray. 

I dream of daring to do no preparations for the Vigil, but leaving the day to silence and then encouraging people to come at a given hour and then begin preparations all together: readers, musicians, flowers, draperies, paintings of creation, especially by the younger members of families, of springs of living waters, and cake making for when the vigil is over. And then beginning the vigil when all is ready; and the cakes are in the oven. I wonder, would  these not lead to what participation in the Liturgy in spirit, mind, hand and body really means. What better night to do so, than that night which promises our bodies shall be raised to the life of the world to come.  


Archbishop Patrick Kelly,
Archdiocese of Liverpool.