
What happens to us when we are swallowed by the darkness, with no escape because it is an inner state more than an outer circumstance? What do we do when nothing we do will change a damn thing? We wait, in hope or despair.
Holy Saturday is this waiting, but it isn’t an idle waiting. Something is happening – we just don’t know it yet.
The creeds speak of Jesus descending into hell – the place of waiting for those who died before he walked the earth, incarnate human. He descended, not to condemn, but to free.
If we trust that death itself cannot separate us from God-With-Us, we just may find ourselves not in a dreadful darkness, but in the hope-filled shadow where resurrection comes.
[About this Icon: The Descent Into Hell is a Russian icon from the school of Novgorod. It was written in the later fifteenth century. This picture is from Maria Giovanna Muzj’s Transfiguration: Introduction to the Contemplation of Icons; Boston, MA: St. Paul’s Books & Media, 1991, p. 139]