A Long Good Friday or a Long Holy Saturday?

This year the Triduum - the great Three Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday - is unwontedly quiet. Having been brought up in a Vicarage it has always been for me about the busiest time of year - much more so than Christmas - with almost wall to wall church, all the time not spent worshipping given to sorting out all the kit for washing feet, watching at the altar of repose, heading out to walks of witness, praying the Stations of the Cross, preparing for the Liturgy of the Passion, and getting ready for the Vigil.

Narthex doorway Hagia Sophia Trabzon (Trebizond)

Although for some there has been a scramble to get things done in new ways, for most this year, all that is gone. For me the experience has been truncated liturgies with hardly any preparation,and the quietest Triduum of my life. It's sorrowful and disconcerting; we yearn for it to be over.

While I and many others find that prayer through activity is at the heart of our spirituality, the enforced repose is not in itself a bad thing. One of the Sea Cadet District Chaplains pointed out to me that the persecuted church must live like this all the time. 

It means that this year there is a focus on the part of the Triduum which we usually ignore: Holy Saturday. The day when the Lord lay in the tomb, the day on which the sacraments are not celebrated and everything lies silent and quiet. In the Western Rite there is no liturgy proper to this day, except that the Book of Common Prayer provides a collect epistle and gospel, texts to point us to its meaning. The Gospel (Matthew 27:57-end) describes what we can see: the entombment and the silence of the garden; but the epistle (1 Peter 3:13-22) describes what is happening in the silence, the 'proclamation to the imprisoned spirits'.

Hagia Sophia Constantinople - blind marble door on the South triforium

Until the virus begins to abate the churches will be closed. Holy Saturday will dominate this strange Eastertide. Holy Saturday, usually hidden in the fuss of clearing up after Good Friday and Setting up for the Easter Vigil will stand out with sudden clarity, pointing us to see again the hidden work of Christ. The work He does alone while the world is impotent of activity and action.

So much of our response to the crisis has been about pretending it is all right really. All right to withdraw the sacraments and cease to share the peace; all right to close the churches and abandon the altars for the dining room table; all right to have coffee over zoom and sermons by live stream. Like Polyanna we claim to be so glad glad glad that it is all like this because now we can do differently. None of this takes seriously how important all those things are to our spiritual well being and our community life, nor allows us space to grieve their loss or rage against their removal. Holy Saturday by contrast takes our frustration and our grief and our sorrow seriously. Mothering Sunday from Lambeth is not the same as taking flowers to my mother and laying a poesy at the image of Our Lady in church, and to pretend otherwise will not do. Holy Saturday allows our grief and loss; but it also invites us to calm faith that the Lord is at work in this as in all things, and asks us to stop trying to do it all, to calm down and to trust in Him.

It is important in this that Holy Saturday is a day of no sacraments. A fact that we usually miss because of getting ready and celebrating the Easter Vigil which while it is technically on Sunday, is on Saturday evening. Sacraments are the source of healing and strength. They keep us going in times of difficulty, are bread for the journey, indispensable to our lives. But as we have learned acutely, they are not always available to us. In the Covid-19 outbreak and in the vicissitudes of the past many have died without viaticum and unshriven; many have lived without daily bread.

Shadow of the Cross; Vardzia Monastery Georgia

To restrict access to the sacraments is not the same as ceasing to celebrate them. It is dangerous and wrong for us to speak in normal times of the sacraments as healing and then to cease them in a time of great need. The hidden celebrations minister grace and continued healing in the time of sickness. We want to see: during 'S Charles's Plague' 1575-6 S Charles Borromeo closed the churches but, in a sixteenth century form of live streaming, built altars outside so that the faithful could observe the mass from their windows. Our medieval churches had their squints and Lepers' Doors so that the infectious sick could be included. The advent of live streaming and such things is an enormous consolation, a squint for our own time.

S Charles Borromeo and the Plague, Jacob Jordaens

But just as participation is not everything, nor is observation. On Holy Saturday what was seen was the sealed door of the tomb. During that sabbath rest what was happening unseen was the grace of the cross being applied to the souls of the dead. Our Lord said of the Sabbath that 'my Father goes on working and so do I.' The context was a debate about the visible Sabbath, but Jesus explicitly linked the reference to the continuing work of the Father with His preaching to the the dead: "a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live." (John 5:25)

This Eastertide may be a long Holy Saturday, a long day in which it seems nothing happens, and there is nothing to see; but perhaps it is in fact the time when in God's mighty activity everything is revealed at last.

It is finished! Blessed Jesus

Thou has breathed thy latest sigh,

Teaching us the sons of Adam

How the son of God can die.

Lifeless lies the pierced body

Resting in its rocky bed

Thou has left the cross of anguish

For the mansions of the dead.

In the hidden realms of darkness

Shines a light unseen before

When the Lord of dead and living

Enters at the lowly door.

Lo, in spirit, rich in mercy

Comes He from the world above

Preaching to the souls in prison

Tidings of his dying love.

Lo the heavenly light around him

As he draws his people near

All amazed they come rejoicing

At the gracious words they hear. 

Patriarch and priest and prophet

Gather round him as he stands

In adoring faith and gladness 

Hearing of the pierced hands.

There in lowliest joy and wonder 

Stands the robber at his side

Reaping now the blessed promise

Spoken by the Crucified. 

Jesus Lord of dead and living

Let thy mercy rest on me 

Grant me too when life is finished

Rest in paradise with thee. 

Archbishop WD Maclagan

LIMBO

The ancient greyness shifted

Christ Pantocrator; Church of the Holy Saviour Chora
Istanbul (Constantinople)

Suddenly and thinned

Like mist upon the moors

Before a wind. 

An old, old Prophet lifted a

A shining face and said h

"He will be coming soon.

The son of God is dead;

He died this afternoon."

A murmurous excitement stirred 

All Souls.

They wondered if they dreamed - 

Save one old man who seemed n

Not even to have heard. 

And Moses standing 

Hushed them all to ask 

If any had a welcome song prepared.

If not, would David take the task?

And if they cared 

Could not the three young children sing 

The Benidicite, the canticle of praise

They made when God kept them from perishing 

In the fiery blaze?

A breath of spring surprised them 

Stilling Moses' words.

No one could speak remembering 

The first fresh flowers,

The little singing birds.

Still others thought of fields new ploughed 

Or Apple trees

All blossom-boughed.

Or some the way a dried bed fills

With water laughing down green hills.

The fisherfolk dreamed of the foam

On bright blue seas.

The one old man who had not stirred

Remembered home. 

And there He was 

Splendid as the morning sun and fair 

As only God is fair.

And they, confused with joy, 

Knelt to adore 

Seeing that he wore 

Five crimson stars 

He never had before.

No canticle at all was sung.

None toned a psalm, or raised greeting song.

A silent man alone

Of all that throng 

Found tongue -

Not any other. 

Close to His heart 

When the embrace was done,

Old Joseph said 

"How is Your Mother,

How is Your Mother Son?

Sister Mary Ada

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