Of all the Triduum services, Holy Saturday is probably the most omitted in common practice today; liturgically it is overshadowed by its lengthy neighboring services for Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, logistically it can seem to stand in the way of preparations for the Easter service(s), and culturally it is a moment many people do not know what to do with.  Holy Saturday is the awkward “in-between” moment.  Jesus has died, but has not yet risen.  The Gospel lesson for this service, as most might expect, tells the brief story of his burial, but therein lies the problem, for our culture is one that does not handle death well.  Funerals are replaced with celebrations of life, burials are replaced with memorial services, so when it comes to the burial of our Lord, whom we know will rise again on the third day, it is all the more difficult for the modern Western heart and mind to sit still at his graveside.  This brief worship service, thus, provides for us precisely what we need to re-learn about death and mourning.  If the Good Friday service is the main event, the primary Burial service, Holy Saturday is the Committal at the graveside – the smaller, simpler, and more intimate moment of standing outside the tomb and reflecting on what has happened.  And yet Holy Saturday has other surprises in store: the doctrine of Christ’s descent into hell (Article of Religion III) is one that is often neglected in modern theological discourse, and this day in the Church Calendar focuses on that like no other.

The Collect of the Day

The two choices of collect emphasize different aspects of Holy Saturday’s Gospel narrative.  The first picks up the theme of Sabbath rest, which Jesus fulfills by “resting” on the seventh day – of his three days in the tomb, Saturday is the only one in which our Lord was dead for the full 24 hours!  We pray that we may “await with him” and “rise with him,” setting up the worshiper for a much-needed lesson in what it means to wait with Christ.  The second collect directs us, instead, toward the activity of Christ’s spirit during his bodily rest.  Here, our prayer is to “wait in hope” and to receive “a share in the glory” of God’s children.

The theme of waiting is common to both collects, but they play out in different contexts, and the officiant should choose which collect to pray based upon which emphasis (bodily rest in the tomb or spiritual activity in hell) will be prevalent in the homily.

The Lessons

Job 14:1-14 is an apt lament for a burial.  It recognizes the shortness of life, the boundaries set by God which mortals cannot cross, and bewails the apparent permanency of death.  Only at the end does it cry out to God, “appoint me a set time, and remember me” and ask “If a man die, shall he live again?”

The Psalms do not answer this question, but give the worshipers further voice to join in Job’s lament.  Psalm 130 is the classic prayer of the dead, balancing the helplessness of “the deep” with God’s mercy and plenteous redemption.  Psalm 88 is a prayer of one betrayed, whose companions are darkness and hidden, daring to ask if and when God’s loving-kindness will be revealed in the grave.  And the beginning of Psalm 31, also appointed in Compline, is an expression of trust amidst confusion; in it we pray with Jesus to the Father “into your hands I commend my spirit.”  The officiant may, as with the Collect, select which Psalm to use based upon the emphasis of the coming sermon; or, because, there are three Psalms to choose from, they may be rotated across Years A, B, and C.

1 Peter 4:1-8 begins to answer the questions and cries of Job and the Psalms: “the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.”  Jesus’ descent among the dead means that the Gospel reaches even the faithful departed.  With such a hope in hand, or, knowing that “the end of all things is at hand,” we are therefore able to receive the ethical teachings of the Apostle in the spirit it was intended: not as bare rules for holy living, but as expressions of divine love fueled by the hope which Christ’s death, descent, and resurrection provides.

The Gospel, either from Matthew 27 or from John 19, may feel anticlimactic after the previous sequence.  The burial narrative is short and simple, and frankly unremarkable after the emotional roller coaster of Job, the Psalm(s), and Saint Peter.  Yet the mundanity of the Gospel lesson is precisely what the worshiper needs to understand in this moment: the glorious work of God is regularly hidden underneath appearances of normality.  An ordinary life plays host to the miraculous work of the Spirit; an ordinary bread plays host to the miraculous body of Christ; an ordinary grave plays host to the salvation of the living and dead.

The Homily and Anthem

In many ways, the Anthem (taken from the Prayer Book’s graveside service) is itself a homily, albeit in devotional form.  It begins with the words of Job, paraphrased, then moves through expressions of faith and hope much like the three Psalms provide.  It concludes in petition to our “holy and merciful Savior” that we may never fall away from him in our own pain and death.  Thus the worshipers apply the Scripture Lessons to themselves in the very reading or singing of this Anthem.

That having been said, many people are not sufficiently liturgically formed to recognize what this Anthem is doing in and through them, and therefore a homily may be said first.

The Prayers

The worship service ends with the Lord’s Prayer and the traditional Blessing from the Daily Office.  The doxology is omitted from the Lord’s Prayer for the same reason as in the Good Friday service – it is a gesture of solemnity and a restraining of celebration, reserving the joyous outcries of praise for the arrival of Easter in the night to come.