Holy Saturday is unlike the other days of the Easter Triduum. We celebrate the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday, on Good Friday we commemorate the drama of Calvary; on Easter Sunday, of course, there is the Glory of the Resurrection. Holy Saturday, on the other hand, is an in-between time, a time of waiting, until the Easter Vigil begins at nightfall.
Holy Saturday, for us, is also a time of preparation, because we know Easter is coming. My sons and I usually attend Morning Prayer and the Office of Readings at the Cathedral first thing in the morning; this year we're staying afterwards to help decorate the Cathedral for the Easter liturgies. At home, too, we'll be busy with cooking for the Holy Day and other preparations.
We can easily forget that Holy Saturday was not like that the first time around. The Disciples were frightened, devastated by the the loss of their Master, and despite his prophetic suggestions that things would happen just this way, it must have seemed to them that he was gone forever. On top of that, most of them were feeling the full shame of the knowledge that they had abandoned their Master in his time of trial; in the case of Peter, the "Rock", that he had even denied him, not once, but three times.
It would be good for us to pause a moment today, in the midst of our preparations, to remember how abandoned those first Christians felt. God does all things in the ripeness of time, and it seems that He wanted them, and us, to have a little while to experience the full weight of Christ’s Sacrifice on the the Cross before celebrating the profound joy of the Resurrection. Why rush it?
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