Holy Saturday: Stepping out of Darkness into the Light of God
“Time” matters, not just because it marks and gives perspectives to human actions, but it also offers us the opportunity to celebrate the defeat of darkness. “Darkness” allows for no presence, it celebrates absence. Before the great statement of our first reading today – “Let there be light,” darkness had a field day, celebrating the absence of light. The joy of this night, the greatest of all nights because light will dawn to put asunder whatever is left of darkness, is the celebration of Christ, the Light of the World; it is the re-enactment of the leadership of God’s Spirit leading human beings out of darkness!
It is important to talk about “darkness” because it is not the absence of sight! The gift of sight is only associated with physical light, the light of God’s created luminaries or the inventive skills of the human person to dispel darkness. The darkness of this night – Holy Saturday – is a different kind of darkness: no luminaries and no technology can illuminate it. It is a darkness that only the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God himself, is able to dispel. Our first reading recalls the original/primal darkness, just before creation. It was not a darkness of sightlessness, but the darkness of inactivity – human absence and passivity. But that original darkness was illuminated by the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God was alive and active in the primal darkness – “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). The Spirit of God sees and acts in every darkness, primal or otherwise.
“Time” is the triumph of light over darkness because it allows human deeds to glorify God; it brings the human person into contact with the Spirit of God which illuminates even in darkness. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26) celebrates the moral impact of human activities to bring about the diminishing of darkness. The “formless void” at creation awaits the good deeds of human beings to dispel darkness. “Time” ticks and “darkness” recedes with every virtuous act of the human person because of the human sharing in the Light of Christ through the Holy Spirit which God gives to his children.
The measure of the recession of darkness is the purpose of time and light. For the Jews, this night – Holy Saturday – encompasses four nights: 1) the night of creation, 2) the night of God’s appearance to Abraham, 3) the night of liberation from Egypt, and 4) the night of the end of creation. These nights have one thing in common – God appears to intervene in darkness to bring about light. Each intervention has a human component to it, and our readings this night underscore every single aspect of the four nights in question. The night of creation manifests the human person as the crown of creation, and the night of God’s appearance to Abram creates a united human family through a covenant of blood. The night of liberation from Egypt inaugurates the journey of humanity towards the night of redemption or the end of the world. The people of God are a pilgrim people.
“You are the salt of the earth . . . You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14), these are instances that awake the moral obligation of the human person to dispel darkness from the earth through ethics. In our gospel, the presence of Mary Magdalene at the tomb is an assurance that resurrection from sin is as important as the resurrection of the physical body from the dead. Holy Saturday celebrates the stepping out of darkness of sin and error into the light of God. It is an invitation to human beings to transform the earth through the power of their moral lives. Each one of us is a candle to be kept burning to dispel darkness. No one lights his too late: better late than never!