Easter Saturday
Holy Saturday, for all practical purposes, is usually given over to preparing for Sunday. Making sure the ham has been purchased and ready to cook, decorating eggs, readying decorations, cleaning the house.
But once in a while – or perhaps even for just a few moments of the day – it might also be useful to remember the character and quality of that first Holy Saturday – which of course wasn’t called “Holy” any more than the day before would have been called “Good.” Rather, it was an awful day of exhaustion and despair and a rest that was as necessary as it was prescribed.
Why is there value in remembering these things? Because we will all, at one time or another, experience moments that share the character of Holy Saturday. In between times that are, in the moment, so awful they do not feel in between but rather endless. After the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a huge disappointment at home, school, or work, we may feel like the whole future has been narrowed to the pinprick of light we can barely see through the dim filter of our pain.
These are Holy Saturday moments, and in naming them so we may, perhaps, recall that after that Saturday of disappointment there came the promise of a new day, Sunday, the eighth day, and with it the unexpected act of possibility and recreation that we all too often take for granted.
In this spirit and vein, a poem from Elizabeth Rooney called “Easter Saturday.”
A curiously empty day,
As if the world’s life
Had gone underground.
The April sun
Warming dry grass
Makes pale spring promises
But nothing comes to pass.
Anger
Relaxes into despair
As we remember our helplessness,
Remember him hanging there.
We have purchased the spices
But they must wait for tomorrow.
We shall keep today
For emptiness
And sorrow.
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