April 4, 2015, Holy Saturday
Greek Orthodox icons: From left, Jesus is prepared for burial, with the Magdalene, the Virgin Mary, the Apostle John and Joseph of Arimathea; other icons show Jesus's descent to Hades.
Holy Saturday is celebrated with elaborate rituals in the Orthodox Church.
Let us return once more to the night of Holy Saturday. In the Creed we say about Christ’s journey that he “descended into hell.” What happened then?
Since we have no knowledge of the world of death, we can only imagine his triumph over death with the help of images which remain very inadequate.
Yet, inadequate as they are, they can help us to understand something of the mystery. The liturgy applies to Jesus’ descent into the night of death the words of Psalm 23[24]: “Lift up your heads, O gates; be lifted up, O ancient doors!”
The gates of death are closed, no one can return from there. There is no key for those iron doors. But Christ has the key. His Cross opens wide the gates of death, the stern doors. They are barred no longer. His Cross, his radical love, is the key that opens them. The love of the One who, though God, became man in order to die – this love has the power to open those doors. This love is stronger than death.
The Easter icons of the Oriental Church show how Christ enters the world of the dead. He is clothed with light, for God is light. “The night is bright as the day, the darkness is as light” (cf. Ps 138[139]12).
- Benedict XVI, Easter Vigil homily, 2007
Holy Saturday is usually the 'neglected' day in the Paschal Triduum, because no special liturgy marks the day, until the Easter Vigil Mass in the late evening or midnight. Benedict XVI has reflected a few times during his Pontificate on the significance of Holy Saturday, and not just because he was born on a Holy Saturday. Perhaps the most significant of these reflections, and particularly beautiful and poignant, was his meditation upon visiting the Shroud of Turin in May 2010. Here is that reflection in full:
The Shroud of Turin:
Icon of Holy Saturday
by BENEDICT XVI
Meditation on his Visit to the Shroud
May 2, 2010
Dear friends,
This was, for me, a much-awaited moment. I have been before the Holy Shroud on other occasions, but this time, I am living this pilgrimage and this occasion with particular intensity.
Perhaps it is because the passage of years has made me even more sensitive to the message of this extraordinary icon. Perhaps - I would say, above all - it is because I am here this time as the Successor of Peter, and I carry in my heart the entire Church, and even all of mankind.
I thank the Lord for the gift of this pilgrimage, and for the opportunity to share with you a brief meditation, the theme of which was suggested to me by the subtitle of this solemn Exposition, namely, the mystery of Holy Saturday.
One can say that the Shroud is the icon for this mystery, the icon of Holy Saturday. Indeed it is a burial cloth which wrapped the remains of a man who was crucified, corresponding in every way to what the Gospels say of Jesus, who, having been crucified at noon, expired around three in the afternoon.
When evening came, since it was Parasceve, or the eve of the solemn Paschal Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a rich and authoritative member of the Sanhedrin, courageously asked Pontius Pilate for permission to bury Jesus in a new tomb that he had ordered excavated not far from Golgotha.
Having obtained the permission, he bought a burial cloth, and after Jesus was taken down from the Cross, he wrapped him in that cloth and buried him in the sepulcher (cfr Mk 15,42-46). Thus says the Gospel of St. Mark, with whom the other evangelists concur.
Jesus remained in the tomb until the dawn of the day following the Sabbath, and the Shroud of Turin offers us the image of how his body lay in the tomb during that time - which was chronologically brief (about a day and a half), but immense, infinite, in its value and its significance.
Holy Saturday is the day when God was hidden, as one reads in an ancient homily: "What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps... God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled" (Homily on Holy Saturday, PG 43, 439).
In the Credo, we profess that Jesus Christ was "crucified under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried; he descended into hell, and on the third day, he rose again from the dead".
Dear brothers and sisters, in our time, especially for those who have experienced the past century, mankind has become particularly sensible to the mystery of Holy Saturday. Hiding God is part of contemporary man's spirit, in an existential manner, almost unconscious, like a void in the heart that has grown increasingly larger.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche wrote: "God is dead! And it is we who killed him". This famous statement, is clearly taken almost literally from the Christian tradition - we often say it in the Via Crucis, perhaps without fully realizing what we are saying.
After the two world wars, the lagers and the gulags, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our age has become increasingly a Holy Saturday: the darkness of that day challenges all those who ask themselves about life, and it particularly challenges us believers. We too have something to do with this darkness.
Nonetheless the death of the Son of God, of Jesus of Nazareth, has an opposite aspect, totally positive, that is a source of comfort and of hope.
This makes me think of the fact that the Holy Shroud is like a 'photographic' document, with a 'negative' and a 'positive' image. Indeed, it is precisely that: the deepest myetery of the faith is at the same time the most luminous sign of unbounded hope.
Holy Saturday is a 'no man's land' between death and resurrection, but into this 'no man's land' entered someone, the Only One, who passed through it with the signs of his Passion for man: Passio Christi, passio hominis.
And the Shroud speaks to us precisely of this moment - it testifies precisely to that unique and unrepeatable interval in the history of mankind and the universe, in which God, in Jesus Christ, shared not just our dying, but also our remaining in death - it is the most radical solidarity.
In that 'time beyond time', Jesus Christ 'descended into hell'. What does this statement mean? It means that God, having made himself man, reached the point of entering man's extremest and absolute solitude, there where no ray of love enters, where total abandonment reigns without any word of comfort: the underworld.
Jesus Christ, remaining in death, went beyond the door of that ultimate solitude in order to lead even us to surpass it with him.
All of us have felt at some time the frightening sense of being abandoned, and what we most fear about death is precisely that, just as when we were children, we were afraid to be a in the dark, and only the presence of a person who loved us could reassure us.
This is exactly what happened on Holy Saturday: the voice of God resounded in the kingdom of death. The unthinkable had occured, namely, that Love had penetrated into the bowels of Hell. Even in the extreme darkness of the most absolute human loneliness, we can hear a voice that calls us and find a hand that leads us out.
The human being lives for the fact that he is loved and he can love - and if, love has penetrated the space of death itself, then even there, life has arrived. In the hour of extreme solitude, we shall never be alone: Passio Christi, passio hominis.
This is the mystery of Holy Saturday. Precisely from the darkness of the death of the Son of God, has emerged the light of a new hope: the light of the Resurrection.
And it seems to me that, in looking at this sacred cloth with the eyes of faith, we can perceive something of that light. In effect, the Shroud was immersed in that profound darkness, but it is at the same time luminous.
I think that if thousands upon thousands of people come to venerate it - without counting those who contemplate it in images - it is because they see in it not just darkness but also the light. Not so much the defeat of life and love, but rather victory, the victory of life over death, of love over hatred.
Yes, they see the death of Jesus, but they also see his Resurrection. In the bosom of death, life now pulses insofar as love is present.
This is the power of the Shroud: from the face of this 'man of sorrows', who carries on him the Passion of man in every time and in every place, even our passions, our sufferings, our difficulties, our sins.
“Passio Christi. Passio hominis”. From this face emanates a solemn majesty, a paradoxical lordship. This face, these hands, these feet, this chest, this whole body speaks - it is itself a word that we can hear in silence.
How does the Shroud speak? It speaks with blood, and blood is life! The Shroud is an Icon written in blood - the blood of a man who was flagellated, crowned with thorns, crucified and wounded on the left side.
The Image impressed on the Shroud is that of a dead man, but the blood speaks of his life. Every trace of blood speaks of love and life. Especially that abundant stain near his rib, made by the blood and water shed copiously from a major wound caused by the tip of a Roman lance.
That blood and water speak of life. It is like a spring that murmurs silently, and we can hear it, we can listen to it, in the silence of Holy Saturday.
Dear friends, let us always praise the Lord for his faithful and merciful love. When we leave this holy place, let us carry in our eyes the image of the Shroud, let us carry in our hearts this word of love, and let us praise God with a life full of faith, hope and charity. Thank you./DIM]
The Vatican has announced that Pope Francis will be visiting Turin on June 21 to venerate the Holy Shroud which will be on public exposition from April 19-June 24. Five years ago, when it was last exposed for public veneration, Benedict XVI paid a memorable pastoral visit to Turin, at which he gave the magnificent meditation quoted above.
On the occasion of the next exposition, Church historian Roberto De Mattei offers this reflection on the Shroud....
Let us go to Turin
to venerate the Shroud
by Roberto De Mattei
Translated from
April 2, 2015
The next exposition of the Holy Shroud of Turin will be from April 19 to June 24 this year. Five years after the last exposition, pilgrims can once more venerate the Shroud at the Cathedral of Turin, on the occasion of the 200th birth anniversary of San Giovanni Bosco.
The Shroud is the funeral sheet in which the Body of Our Lord was wrapped for burial. It is referred to in the synoptic Gospels
(Mk 13,46; Mt 27,59; Lk 23,53), and as a
soudarion, in the Gospel of St. John.
It is not a simple icon, not one of the innumerable ‘images’ of our Lord Jesus Christ that can be seen around the world, but an authentic relic, the most precious in Christianity, before which in the course of centuries, Popes, saints and millions of simple faithful have prayed.
The invention of photography raised the veil on the mystery of the Shroud which for almost 2000 years had kept its ‘content’ hidden. Indeed, the figure of our Redeemer on the textile is a photographic negative that records a great quantity of details that no painter could have imagined or depicted without knowledge of the photographic process.
The Man of the Shroud, who is Jesus, assumes and concentrates in himself all the drama of the Passion. The historic precision of the Gospels regarding the flagellation, the crowning with thorns, the crucifixion, the wound on the side of Our Lord, receive extraordinary proof in the Shroud.
The image on the Shroud confirms the prophecy of Isaiah: “From the sole of the foot to the head, there is no sound spot in it; Just bruise and welt and oozing wound, not drained, or bandaged, or eased with salve”
(1,6).
Why such suffering? Our faith teaches us that Jesus came to the world to redeem man from the sin of Adam, because of which man is prey to all the physical and moral evils of the universe.
“Therefore, just as through one person, sin entered the world, and through sin, death - and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned...”
(Rom 5,12).
So man is born, lives and dies in suffering. But all of suffering humanity was ransomed by Jesus Christ. The Shroud reminds us that human life, after Original Sin,
is suffering, but that all of our sufferings were assumed by He who is without sin, and that in him we can find the answer to our pain.
Nothing elevates man more than suffering which is freely accepted and courageously borne. One of the major deceptions of life consists in thinking that it is possible to be happy by evading suffering. Actually, the man who does not suffer is unhappy, because he is deprived of the joy that is born from giving a meaning to one’s suffering.
Irrational creatures suffer without being able to give a meaning to their suffering. But man, through his intelligence, can understand that suffering is a consequence of sin – original and actual – and that suffering can serve as reparation for sin, to expiate sin, in union with Jesus Christ.
The Shroud, which is the true image of God-become-man, teaches us how to suffer. In moments of anguish and pain, physical or moral, let us look at the Man of the Shroud. His face is disfigured, but what is striking is the contrast between the effects of the abuses he has suffered and the pacific majesty of his face.
Jesus offers us the model of that attitude of patience, gravity, recollection, with which we must learn to bear those trials and tribulations, sacrifices and adversities that mark our life. But this must always be accompanied by immense trust in him who, in dying, defeated death.
The Holy Shroud of Turin does not only demonstrate the truth of the Passion of Christ but it offers an impressive proof of his Resurrection. Scientists who have studied the Shroud have concluded that only a mysterious energy, a sudden and lightning-like irradiation could have impressed that negative image on the fabric. In short, only the Resurrection from the dead of the man who was scourged and crucified under Pontius Pilate, could explain the mysterious origin of the Holy Shroud.
He had promised he would rise again on the third day, and the Resurrection constituted the supreme proof of his divinity - the great miracle that reunites and recapitulates all miracles and all prophecies.
Jesus rose again triumphant, not allegorically or spiritually, as a certain progressivist theology would have it, but visibly – in Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
The Holy Shroud registered the photographic negative of the Resurrection, offering us a new argument to affirm that only in the Catholic Church can we find our salvation.
In his epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul recalls the fundamental truths that the Apostles announced from the beginning in their preaching, namely, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Christ had not died and risen again, Redemption would not have come. The Resurrection is the foundation of our faith.
From one man, Adam, came death; and from another man, a God-man, came life. As in Adam, all of us died, in Christ we are all revived. All of humanity, says St. Augustine, is recapitulated “in the story of two men, of which one lost all of us by doing his will and not that of him who had created him; and the other has saved us in himself, not doing his own will but that of him who had sent him. All of Christian faith is in the story of these two men”.
Holy Week recapitulates this drama, and at the Easter vigil, the liturgy of the Church entrusts us her message of hope and victory.
Easter, said Dom [Prosper] Gueranger is the proclamation of the kingdom of the immolated Lamb. It is the cry of the elect who are in heaven: “The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed”
(Rev 5,5).
Jesus has risen, “like a lamb for us, like a lion for his enemies”, uniting henceforth the attributes of strength and gentleness. The strength with which we must fight the enemies of our faith, and charity, which we must exercise towards our brothers.
The Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ was the hinge of apostolic preaching and should be the foundation of our faith. The Holy Shroud of Turin represents its visible and moving compendium. And that is why we too must ‘go to Turin’ to venerate the sacred relic.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/04/2015 02:46]