Sitting in the Dust

The Entombment by Peter Paul Rubens
from Digital Images

Today is the day we call Holy Saturday. We call it so, because it is a remembrance of the day Christ body lay in the tomb, and His spirit "descended into hell." For us, this is a day of hope, for we know what is just around the corner.

But we must not forget the gravity of this day. We must not forget what Holy Saturday was for the disciples, whose hopes had been dashed. We must not forget what it was for his mother. God gave me this child, He told me He was the child of promise. How can this be? 

Holy Saturday is the day of Job, where we all lie in the dust of our lives, covered in boils, having lost all that is dear to us. 

We must not forget the gravity of this day, because it is in this day that many in the world live. They live day today only with death their only certainty, and hope but a memory. Even for many in the church, it is easy to forget the promise of the Resurrection when we see the horror of suffering in our world. 

Holy Saturday is important, because it is the day in which God sits in the dust with us in our despair. On Holy Saturday, God did not come in a whirlwind and speak of the wonders of creation. Instead, He was pulled down to the very depths of Hell. "I am in fidelity with you in your suffering" declares God. This is the first answer to the problem of evil. 

Let us never forget to sit with those that suffer, to be with them in the reality of what they face. If God did not see fit to trivialize suffering, but instead to take it upon Himself, let us do no less.