The Great and Holy Sabbath

(Christ in the Tomb, Hans Holbein, Jr.)

"Hell shuddered when it beheld you, the Redeemer of all, who was laid in a tomb.  Its bonds were broken; its gates smashed! The tombs were opened; the dead arose.  Then Adam cried in joy and thanksgiving: Glory to your condescension, O Lover of man!"  (Orthodox Vespers for Good Friday)

Holy Saturday connects Good Friday, the commemoration of the Cross, with the day of Christ's Resurrection.  

Father Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983), the great Orthodox protopresbyter, writer, and ecumenicist, masterfully describes the meaning of Holy Saturday, a day often overlooked in the Western Church except for the celebration of the Great Vigil of Easter in the evening hours.

"...The Church proclaims that Christ has 'trampled death by death'.  It means that even before the Resurrection, an event takes place, in which the sorrow is not simply replaced by joy, but is itself transformed into joy.  Great Saturday is precisely this day of transformation, the day when victory grows from inside the defeat, when before the Resurrection, we are given to contemplate the death of death itself...

The sorrow of Friday is, therefore, the initial theme...We stand at the gave of our Lord, we contemplate His death, His defeat...[but] along with this initial theme of sorrow and lamentation, a new theme makes it appearance...love for the law of God, i.e., for the Divine design of man and of his life...'Consider how I love Your precepts.  Quicken me, O Lord, according to Your loving kindness...'  The death of Christ is the ultimate proof of His love for the will of God, of His obedience to His Father...for the Church it is precisely this obedience to the end, this perfect humility of the Son that constitutes the foundation, the beginning of His victory...

'Hades' in the concrete biblical language means the realm of death, which God has not created and which He did not want; it also signifies that the Prince of this world is all powerful in the world.  Sin, Death - these are the 'dimensions' of Hades, its content...'sin entered the world, and death by sin.' (Romans 5:12)...the entire universe has become a cosmic cemetery...And this is why death is 'the last enemy,' (1 Corinthians 15:20) and its destruction constitutes the ultimate goal of the Incarnation.  This encounter with death is the 'hour' of Christ...

At first the forces of evil seem to triumph.  The Righteous One is crucified, abandoned by all, and endures a shameful death.  He also becomes the partaker of 'Hades,' of this place of darkness and death...but at this very moment, the real meaning of this death is revealed.  The One who dies on the Cross has Life in Himself, i.e., He has life not as a gift from outside, a gift which therefore can be taken away from Him, but as His own essence.  For He is the Life and the Source of all life...The man Jesus dies, but this Man is the Son of God...in Him, God Himself enters the realm of death, partakes of death.  This is the unique, the incomparable meaning of Christ's death.  In it, the man who dies is God, or to be more exact, the GodMan.  God is the Holy Immortal; and only in the unity 'without confusion, without change, without division, without separation' of God and Man in Christ can human death be 'assumed' by God and be overcome and destroyed from within, be 'trampled down by death.'...

Hence the necessity of the Incarnation and the necessity of that Divine death.  In Christ, man restores obedience and love.  In Him, man overcomes sin and evil.  It was essential that death were not only destroyed by God, but overcome and trampled down in human nature itself, by man and through man...

'Let creation rejoice! Let all born on earth be glad! For hateful hell has been despoiled.'...We are still standing before the Tomb, but it has been revealed to us as the life-giving Tomb.  Life rests in it, a new creation is being born, and once more, on the Seventh Day, the day of rest - the Creator rests from all His work.  'The Life sleeps and Hades trembles' - and we contemplate, this blessed Sabbath, the solemn quiet of the One who brings life back to us...

'This is the blessed Sabbath.  This is the day of rest...But on this day, He returned again through the resurrection.  He has granted us eternal life, for he alone is good, the Lover of man.'... (Orthodox Canon for Great Saturday)

Christ arose again from the dead, His Resurrection we will celebrate on Easter Day.  This celebration, however, commemorates a unique event of the past, and anticipates a mystery of the future.  It is already His Resurrection, but not yet ours.  We will have to die, to accept the dying, the separation, the destruction.  Our reality in this world...is the reality of the Great Saturday; this day is the real image of our human condition...Baptized into His death, we partake already of His life that came out of the grave.  We receive His Body and Blood which are the food of immortality.  We have in ourselves the token, the anticipation of the eternal life.  All our Christian existence is measured by these acts of communion in the life of the 'new eon' of the Kingdom, and yet we are here and death is our inescapable share...

But this life between the Resurrection of Christ and the day of the common resurrection, is it not precisely the life in the Great Saturday? Is not expectation the basic and essential category of Christian experience? We wait in love, hope and faith...all this is our own 'Great Saturday.'...and yet, how slow is this approach, how long is this day! But is not the wonderful quiet of Great Saturday the symbol of our very life in this world? Are we not always in this 'middle day,' waiting for the Pascha of Christ, preparing ourselves for the day without evening of His Kingdom?"