Holy Saturday: Stepping out of Darkness into the Light of God
“Time” matters, not just because it marks and gives perspective to human actions, but it also offers us the opportunity to celebrate the defeat of darkness—Holy Saturday. Before “time” came to be, “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 and time. 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, and the beginning of time; it is the re-enactment of the leadership of God’s Spirit leading human beings out of darkness into light.
It is important to talk about “darkness” because it is not the absence of sight—the ability to see! The gift of sight is only associated with physical lights—the lights of God’s created luminaries or the invented apparati of the human science 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 that 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 that God gives to his children.
The measure of the recession of darkness is the purpose of time and light. For the Jews and Christians, 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. This is our memorial night!
Our first night, the night of creation, manifests the human person as the crown of creation, because God created the human person after the creation of all that the human person would need to survive. It is like responsible parenthood, where all is prepared ahead of the arrival of a baby or babies. The human person is not a product of coincidence but the intention of God. If human beings came from God, there is definitely a mission for them on earth and a scheduled day for them to return to God.
Our second night is the need for human protection from Original Sin—the sin of Adam and Eve—and the creation of a human family. The story of Noah—the deluge—tells the power of sin in recreating darkness. God defeats sin and recreates human beings after the flood, and enters a new covenant with humanity—the rainbow. The fragility of the light of creation, because of sin, is like the light of the candle we hold tonight that needs protection from the wind that constantly seeks to blow it out. God plans to enter into a covenant with every human being, so that each one of us will be responsible for his/her life. Our reading about Abram in Genesis and the covenant of a Promised-Land and multiple descendants vitiate the effect of sin to destroy God’s creation and show God’s reminder to us that God wants a united human family as his children.
The story of liberation from Egypt, in Exodus, the returnee exiles from Babylon, in Isaiah, the the promise of a “new covenant,” in Jeremiah, and the fount of living water from the Temple, in Ezekiel, situate the third night of our quadruple nights. These readings indicate that no human generation is beyond God’s redemption and liberation, not even in the face of COVID-19. Here and now, through a covenant of blood—the blood of Christ on the Cross of Calvary—we have all become sons and daughters of God, invincible people of God. The water of baptism initiates us into this “new covenant,” that is why we have baptisms this night as a reminder. Our Holy Communion is the reality of our communion/sharing in this new covenant. The night of liberation from Egypt inaugurates the journey of humanity towards the night of redemption or the end of the world—the fourth night. The people of God are a pilgrim people. Hence, our Old Testament readings link up with Paul’s teaching on baptism, in the New Testament.
“Darkness” appears each time “light” is threatened. When the supremacy of God and the power of the Holy Spirit is doubted, darkness lurks in the corner. “Darkness” comes in the form of faithlessness, sin and physical oppression/slavery. The disappearance of good deeds and good people is a harbinger for the appearance of darkness. Today, this period of COVID-19, darkness threatens light because of faithlessness and anxiety. The certainty that neither science nor human will can bring the human race to extinction is doubted; the power of God as Lord of science and health is questioned. But tonight—Holy Saturday—the Light of Christ, the Lord of history and master of creation, reminds us of our creation and our end: the history of God’s creation is the time for human beings to do good, by so doing dispel every threat of darkness. The liberations and redemptions of his people of old, either from Egypt, on account of slavery/oppression, or from Babylon, because of sin, display what God can and would do, even today against COVID-19, because it threatens his creation.
“You are the salt of the earth . . . You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14), these are instances that awaken 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. COVID-19 only poses a problem to the darkness of unbelief in eternal life and the reunification of the just with God. The physical death of Christ, on Good Friday, renders useless the sting of COVID-19, because all it may do is kill the body, which will definite die some day anyway.
Holy Saturday is the Triumph of physical death in the hope of the resurrection and eternal life. 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!