Holy Saturday 2019 - Hell trembles with fear

The ancient homily on Holy Saturday states: “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.”

In the Apostle’s Creed we profess that after Christ was crucified, died and buried, “He descended into Hell.” Christ was not condemned to Hell, like the rest of humanity. Rather he descended; he went willingly and with purpose.
From the time of Adam, all who died, whether evil or righteous were deprived of the vision of God. And Christ went to those who souls who awaited their Savior. The ancient homily says, “he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve…the Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory.”

Holy Saturday is a quiet day. Yet, in the quiet, if we listen, and If we grow silent enough, and listen well, we hear hell trembling, and the voice of the Lord, victorious through the cross, proclaiming a word of life, a word of freedom. The Catechism says, “Christ went down into the depths of death so that "the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live."

In the Canticle from morning prayer this morning from Isaiah chapter 38, one of God’s faithful ones ponders how, though he shall come to the gates of the netherworld, the pit of destruction, because of his sins, God will save him, his sins will be put behind him, death will not get the final word. “Fathers will pass on to their children the truth of your faithfulness”. This is the truth that is passed on through the generations by the Christian faithful. The truth that salvation is found in Jesus Christ, mercy and forgiveness, freedom from sin and death is found in Jesus Christ: through His death, burial, and resurrection.

Yes, there is a great silence on earth today. But we incline our ear passed the silence, to a Word which cannot be silenced. Not by the world, not by the powers of corruption and selfishness, sin, evil or malice.

Though much evil still fills the world, and the powers of death seek to swallow us whole, we open our hearts to the new life-giving Word, to the one who holds the keys of death and of hell, and opens the doors of heaven, resurrection and eternal life to those who would follow Him, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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All-powerful and ever-living God, your only Son went down among the dead and rose again in glory. In your goodness raise up your faithful people, buried with him in baptism, to be one with him in the everlasting life of heaven, where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.