Holy Saturday, April 16, 2022

Mass is not celebrated today.  The vigil Mass for the Solemnity of Easter takes place in the evening, which is considered Sunday, liturgically speaking.

There are some significant texts to consider on Holy Saturday that tell of the “harrowing of hell”, or, the Lord’s raising of the souls of the just from the dead into heaven:

Psalm 24, 7–10: Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle! Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory! 

From ancient times, this text from the Psalms has been understood as the joyous shouts of the holy angels that the gates of the place of the dead be opened to the Lord Jesus, triumphant in his sufferings, so that he might lead the righteous of all the ages into heaven.  The demons seek to resist and demand to know, “Who is this King of glory?”  The holy angels reply, “The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!”  The text is so vivid that it was used in the miracle plays of the Middle Ages.  In his “Divine Comedy”, Dante uses these words to commemorate the raising up of the just on Holy Saturday.  Georg Friedrich Handel also uses the text for this purpose in his “Messiah”.  In the oratorio, this chorus precedes the “Hallelujah Chorus” in which the angels proclaim the Lord’s Resurrection.

1 Peter 3, 18–20: For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.

St. Peter here explains that just as the Lord Jesus does for those alive during his lifetime and for those yet to be born, he died for those who had already died and were kept in “prison”.  In ancient times, an accused person would be kept in a “prison” awaiting trial — that is to say, judgment — or execution.  There were no prison sentences in those days.  Imprisonment was very temporary.  Prior to the Lord’s Passion and Death, all the souls of the dead went to this place and waited.  External punishment was not afflicted on the souls though some may have suffered intensely from guilt.

John 5, 25: Amen, amen, I say to you: the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

When the Lord Jesus consummated the new covenant between God and man with his Death on the Cross, he “descended to the dead”, as according to the Apostles Creed.  Formerly this phrase was translated as “descended into hell”, which was the Old English word for the underworld.  The Latin is descendit ad inferos, which means, “he descended to the dead”.  Only over time did the word “hell” come to mean the place of eternal punishment for the devil and the damned.  Thus, “the harrowing of hell”.  A farmer “harrowed” his field before planting, using a kind of rake to break up the earth.  Jesus “harrowed” hell in that he tore it asunder, removing from it so many souls who “heard” and heeded his voice.  We can also think of the Lord harrowing hell, afflicting the demons with unutterable grief by taking away from their clutches souls whom they had deemed as already theirs.  The souls of the just heard “the voice” of the Son of God as the lost sheep hears the voice of its shepherd, and follows him to the pastures where it belongs.  On Holy Saturday, the Lord preached to the dead as he had for three years preached to the living, and just as in the latter case, there were those who believed and those who rejected belief, out of pride.  Those who believed were raised into heaven and those who rejected him were cast into the fiery hell of punishment.

Here is the last part of an early version of “The Harrowing of Hell” which I have put into modern English:

Jesus: 

Adam and my friends in faith, 

from all your foes come forth with me;

You shall be set on bright thrones

where you shall nevermore see sorrows.

And Michael, my bright angel,

receive all these souls unto yourself

and lead them as I shall bid you

to Paradise with festivity and plenty.

I to my grave will go

ready to rise heavenward

and so I shall fulfill

what I before have promised.

Michael:

Lord, we shall wend our way after you

to the solace that they shall be sent,

but that the devils do not give us chase,

Lord, bless us with your holy hand.

Jesus:

My blessing I bestow upon you.

I shall be with you where you go;

and all who fully love my law,

they shall be blessed without end.

Adam:

To you, O Lord, be praise

from us whom you have won from woe;

for your praises will we sing,

Laus tibi cum gloria!