The hell of Holy Saturday
Like many mourners on the front lines of the pandemic, Mary’s body is weighed down with grief.
A nurse on the front lines of COVID-19 works on the precipice between death and life. Looking around, she does not have the support she needs. No ventilators. No protective gear. Afraid of carrying the virus home, she develops new routines of taking off her scrubs, laundering, showering, and pulling on her casual clothes. Surgeries and births are conducted without family members physically present. Final goodbyes are managed over phone lines without the chance to touch. These separations—worst nightmares, some say—are marking this moment and redefining funerals with mourners at a distance. Refrigerated trucks arrive in New York to be used as makeshift morgues, and tent-hospitals are set up in city parks. Likened to dystopian futures, scenes of the pandemic unfold around us.
At the same time, around the world, millions of Christians are observing Holy Saturday. It is a gap day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. In some Christian traditions, it is simply a day to hide the Easter eggs. But in other traditions, it is a day to witness the long and slow movement from death to life. The day before Easter marks the event of the crucified Christ descending into the depths of hell.
In the Gospel accounts, Holy Saturday’s witness is enacted in the stumbling steps of Mary. Like many mourners on the front lines of the pandemic, her body is weighed down with grief. Her eyes filled with tears, she cannot see clearly. Morning still looks like night. She cannot find his body. Instead she stands alone, arriving at the tomb with the smell of his burial perfume still on her clothes.
