Holy Saturday
“Rise, let us leave this place.”
These words from the Office of Readings on Holy Saturday call to mind the icons of Christ harrowing hell, pulling Adam and Eve up out of the grave.
They call to mind the fairy tales of a maiden locked in a tower before she is rescued.
They call to mind the many psychological experiments that have demonstrated that those who are traumatized will not leave the situation that traumatizes and wounds them until they are shown the way out. We must be shown the way out.
They call to mind the truth that we all need a grace from outside of ourselves.
As Pope Francis writes in Evangelii Gaudium: “The salvation which God offers us is the work of his mercy.” It is not our own ideas or efforts that bring about salvation, but God who brings out the light to we who walk in darkness. Hell seems all-encompassing when you are in it: despair, desolation, disgust—these are tides that wash over us and drag us under them. They feel, like an undertow, inescapable. But is darkness really so permanent? Can death truly claim victory?
Earlier this week, I led a Holy Week Zoom reading for the Jesuit Media Lab. A group of 15 of us read through Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot over the course of three nights. It was a beautiful, flash-in-the-pan experience of making art, telling a story, and building creativity and community over a frail Zoom connection. Guirgis’ play is the story of Holy Week as a courtroom drama: the story of a betrayal, crucifixion, and the harrowing of hell for one man.
Judas, in the play, is stuck in hell–but can he get unstuck?
Many saints intercede for Judas, love is lavished on him, Jesus washes his feet, again. Perhaps, this play suggests, Jesus will wash Judas’ feet until the end of the world. Perhaps Jesus is the one who never tires of washing our feet. Perhaps he is the one whose love cannot be exhausted. “If you hate who I love, then you do not know me at all,” Christ says, “And make no mistake, ‘Who I love’ is every last one.”
Jesus comes back to hell to show Judas the way out. To walk him out of the fear, the self-pity, the shame, the sin and the woundedness that keep him frozen in one place.
We have all been sprung from the “prison-bars of death,” as the Exsultet sings tonight–for most of us, long before we can remember it–in our baptism. Christ claimed us as his, we shared in his death and so shared in his rising (Romans 6:5). Tonight, we will remember our own baptisms as we celebrate the initiation of the new members of the Body of Christ. Tonight, we will remember that we were once shown the way out, so whatever desolation or gloom of sins surrounds us, the grace we have been given is stronger still. Resurrection cannot be contained. Dazzling is this night for us, and full of gladness.
Renee Roden is a freelance writer, journalist, and playwright. She is the Vice President of the Board of The Catholic Artist Connection.