Holy Saturday, March 30, 2024

Mark 16, 1-7

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint him. Very early when the sun had risen, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb. They were saying to one another, “Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back; it was very large. On entering the tomb they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a white robe, and they were utterly amazed. He said to them, “Do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Behold the place where they laid him. But go and tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.”

The above Gospel Reading is used for the Easter Vigil Mass late Saturday night when we anticipate the glory of Easter Sunday.  During the daytime it is useful for us to recollect how, after his Death, the Lord Jesus “preached to those spirits that were in prison” (1 Peter 3, 19).  The Lord, after finishing the course of his life on earth descended to the place where all the souls of the dead were kept.  They heard the word of God, and those who had lived just lives and accepted it were saved and those who did not were were cast into hell.  This event has been known since the Middle Ages as “the harrowing of hell”, since this place of the dead was thought to be adjacent to hell.  Details of this harrowing are provided by the apocryphal Gospel of  Nicodemus (c. 350).  The arrival of Christ to the place of the dead is related in this way: 

“There was a great voice like thunder, saying: ‘Lift up your gates, O you rulers; and be lifted up, you everlasting gates; and the King of glory shall come in.’  When Hades heard, he said to Satan: ‘Go forth, if you are able, and withstand him.’  Satan therefore went forth to the outside. Then Hades said to his demons: ‘Secure well and strongly the gates of brass and the bars of iron, and attend to my bolts, and stand in order, and see to everything; for if he come in here, woe will seize us.’ . . . There came, then, again a voice saying: ‘Lift up the gates.’ Hell, hearing the voice . . . answered as if he did not know, and said: ‘Who is this King of glory?’ The angels of the Lord said: ‘The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.’ And immediately with these words the bronze gates were shattered and the iron bars broken, and all the dead who had been bound came out of the prisons . . . and the King of glory came in the form of a man, and all the dark places of Hell were lit up.”  

Hell was seen not as some terrible place, merely, but as a greedy, devouring monster.  Also to be noted is that that the author has adapted verses from Psalm 24 to be spoken by the angels and is the basis for a chorus in Georg Frideric Handel’s oratorio, Messiah, in the eighteenth century.

Who followed Christ into heaven?  Adam and Eve, who had repented of their awful sin and never sinned again; Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, Moses, the Prophets, the Holy Innocents, the Lord’s foster father, Joseph, John the Baptist, and so many more.

We ought to pray to the saints who dwell now in eternal glory and ask for their aid in persevering in our faith so that our earthly celebration of the Lord’s triumphal Resurrection on Easter Sunday will prepare us to join them in celebrating it in heaven.