the last of the first sabbaths: great and holy saturday

although many of you reading this blog almost certainly will have observed maundy thursday and good friday, and are looking forward to the great paschal celebration of the resurrection of our lord, i suspect fewer will note holy saturday. yet this day is as important in our salvation as any other of the triduum.

the eastern church has maintained it's observance of this day, and the western church is beginning to recover it, but i have heard little made of it in the west.

this is the day our lord, after his crucifixion took captivity captive, rested in the earth. as gregory of nazianzus (one of the paleo cappadocians) said, "what is not assumed is not redeemed." the struggle to understand the fullness of our great redemption came to be expressed as the fight against arianism. the orthodox church recognized the holy nature of this great sabbath, in which our incarnate lord rested from finishing the new creation even as his father rested from finishing the first creation.

we imply this in the apostles' creed when we say "he descended to the dead" in the newer translations which avoid what to us modern folks an incomprehensability in the older translaton: "he descended into hell."

i cannot recommend too highly that we, too, take this as a day of profound rest, and use the holy saturday office to rejoice in the magnificence of our salvation.