Tag: Holy Saturday

The Lord’s Decent into Hell

From An Ancient Homily on Holy Saturday: The Lord’s Decent Into Hell

Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

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Great and Holy Saturday

In the tomb with the body and in Hades with the soul, in Paradise with the thief and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, were You, O boundless Christ filling all things.

— Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom

Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday 2022

Saturday, 4/16, Holy and Great Saturday

9:00 a.m. Divine Liturgy
4:00 p.m. Blessing of Easter Foods
6:00 p.m. Blessing of Easter Foods
7:00 p.m. Prayers at the Tomb

Sunday, 4/17, Holy and Great Resurrection of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

9:00 a.m. Procession and Paschal (Easter) Matins —Blessing of Arts (bread)
10:30 a.m. For the people of the parish —Anointing

Blessing of Easter Foods following the Divine Liturgy in the church hall.

Great and Holy Saturday

Great and Holy Saturday is the day on which Christ reposed in the tomb.

The Church calls this day the Blessed Sabbath. The great Moses mystically foreshadowed this day when he said:

God blessed the seventh day.
This is the blessed Sabbath.
This is the day of rest,
on which the only-begotten Son of God rested from all His works . . . .

(Vesperal Liturgy of Holy Saturday)

By using this title the Church links Holy Saturday with the creative act of God. In the initial account of creation as found in the Book of Genesis, God made man in His own image and likeness. To be truly himself, man was to live in constant communion with the source and dynamic power of that image: God. Man fell from God. Now Christ, the Son of God through whom all things were created, has come to restore man to communion with God. He thereby completes creation. All things are again as they should be. His mission is consummated. On the Blessed Sabbath He rests from all His works.

THE TRANSITION

Holy Saturday is a neglected day in parish life. Few people attend the Services. Popular piety usually reduces Holy Week to one day — Holy Friday. This day is quickly replaced by another — Easter Sunday. Christ is dead and then suddenly alive. Great sorrow is suddenly replaced by great joy. In such a scheme Holy Saturday is lost.

In the understanding of the Church, sorrow is not replaced by joy; it is transformed into joy. This distinction indicates that it is precisely within death the Christ continues to effect triumph.

TRAMPLING DOWN DEATH BY DEATH

We sing that Christ is “. . . trampling down death by death” in the troparion of Easter. This phrase gives great meaning to Holy Saturday. Christ’s repose in the tomb is an “active” repose. He comes in search of His fallen friend, Adam, who represents all men. Not finding him on earth, He descends to the realm of death, known as Hades in the Old Testament. There He finds him and brings him life once again. This is the victory: the dead are given life. The tomb is no longer a forsaken, lifeless place. By His death Christ tramples down death.

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Holy Saturday

“It is finished!”

When Jesus died on the Cross, at that moment he trampled upon death by his death.

“He rose on the third day according to the Scriptures.”

Why the wait?
First, our Lord was a pious Jew, part of the people with whom God had made a covenant. It was to perfectly fulfill this covenant that Jesus rested on the seventh day from his labors to begin a new creation on the eighth day.

“The great Moses mystically prefigured the present day when he said: God blessed the seventh day. For this is the blessed Sabbath. This is the day of rest on which the only-begotten Son of God kept the Sabbath in the flesh by resting in death from all his works according to the plan of salvation. Returning again to what he was through the Resurrection, he granted us eternal life. He alone is good and Loves us all.” (Doxasticheron of Holy Saturday)

By keeping the Sabbath, he fulfilled the Scriptures, as we profess always, “he rose according to the Scriptures.” This was to fulfill the sign of Jonah, who spent three days in the belly of the great fish: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matthew 12:39). This day is the sign given to all believers.

Father Alexander Schmemann wrote that Holy Saturday manifests our life in the world. The Son of God was not subject to corruption, but we are mortal and must return to dust. Peter preached on Pentecost: “This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:23-24). But we are still held by the throes of death. This day is a reflection of our lives in the world. He live in the hope of resurrection and eternal life, but for now we must work to establish the kingdom of God in the world in which we live, a world that does not know Christ, a world in which we all must confront the mystery of death. Today we pray that God may give us the grace, the strength to “do his will, on earth as it is in heaven.”

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