Holy Saturday: The In-Between
Waiting on holy ground
Today is Holy Saturday.
Today is about the space between devastation and deliverance. Between “It is finished,” and “He is not here.”
Today is a day of silence and unanswered questions. A day of waiting.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like waiting. Especially when I’m grieving. Sitting in the pain. Unsure of what comes next.
But that is what Holy Saturday holds.
O God, how can we understand?
O God, our Lord is gone.
God, did Rome really win?—from @milkandhoneymamas
Holy Saturday is that fragile, hollow space where nothing makes sense and all we’re left with is each other.
We know tomorrow will include filling the Easter baskets, gathering with family, and attending a Sunday service. We know what comes next. We know how the story turns.
But perhaps it’s good to remember to pause on Holy Saturday.
Because they didn’t know.
Mary and Martha, Ruth, Salome, Peter, and the others knew fear. They knew the teacher, the healer, and the friend they followed had been taken. The tomb was full.
“We speak few words this day that is hollow,
this day that sighs with one great sorrow.
We sit in the garden next to the tomb,
knowing that soon it will be a womb. Amen.”
—Common Prayer for Children and Families
The middle space
LDS theologian Deidre Green said,
“Some Christian theologians assert that believers often move too quickly from the crucifixion to the resurrection, without adequately appreciating all that can be gleaned by reflecting upon the absence and uncertainty of what lies between Good Friday and Easter Sunday: the in-between symbolized by Holy Saturday.”
So today, I wondered. Do I linger here, on Holy Saturday, long enough? Do I demand answers instead? I want to open the door to light and joy. I want resolution.
Instead, Holy Saturday offers us solidarity in the unresolved.
Green also said, “Love’s work is not limited to the sacrifice on the cross, but is expanded to witnessing and remaining in a middle space.”
My in-between
My Good Friday was filled with children running wild in the backyard, smashing cascarones over each other’s heads in a swirl of confetti and color. Our annual chaos. Our own tradition of joy.
Today—Holy Saturday—was go, go, go. I’ve driven between soccer games for Dominic and Gabriela, a book signing for a favorite author, and a drive up to the State Capitol to see a protest gathering.
Nathan is now at the grocery store, a late-evening trip, buying ingredients for the dinner he’s cooking tomorrow. We’ll go to the church in the morning, shorter than usual, but still a Sabbath.
And in the middle of all that motion…
I’m thinking about the stillness we rarely let ourselves feel.
Together in our weariness
“I think, in a sense, we are collectively living a Holy Saturday.
We wait, not passively, but actively—as a stance of hope.
We work while we wait—for justice, reconciliation, and healing.”—Jenny Richards
Is it just me, or do you sometimes feel like things are suspended? Suspended between cruelty and courage, violence and peace, silence and something we hope is still coming.
Holy Saturday is about loss that hasn’t yet found resolution.
It reminds me that community isn’t just celebration. It’s sitting together in confusion and weariness.
The disciples didn’t know what to do next, so they sat and ate.
The miracle began in the dark
The Entombment painting above is from a fifteenth-century book that’s been copied and illuminated at the Monastery of St. George in Armenia. Christ’s body lies at the center, with His head tilted toward the viewer but wrapped, like the rest of him. Joseph of Arimathea cradles His head, and Nicodemus straightens his legs. Two of the Marys stand by, grieving. The dark blue above indicates the deep darkness of the cave. It represents emptiness and loss.
The brown and green are the colors of the earth.
The Savior is completely hidden in the white shroud.
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.
—Matthew 27:57-61
I want Easter. The lilies, the hallelujah, the joy that feels earned. I want the ending tied up in light and music.
But that’s not where the resurrection begins.
It starts in silence. In the dark. In a sealed tomb that smelled of sweat and burial spices and damp, heavy stone.
The miracle didn’t begin with trumpets. It began in the earth.
That’s what Holy Saturday reminds me of: God doesn’t skip the sorrow.
Absence doesn’t mean abandonment.
And just because nothing is visible doesn’t mean nothing is happening.
The stone didn’t roll away so Jesus could leave. It rolled away so I could look in.
In college, I prepared for a semester of studying abroad with the BYU Jerusalem program. I took a history class, had my passport, and was a few weeks away from going when they canceled my semester due to safety. I’ve never personally looked inside the tomb.
And still, the stone was rolled away so I could look in and see the ending where there’s nothing there.
So when I’m stuck in the waiting, in the ache of not knowing, the exhaustion of showing up anyway, the mess of the unresolved, I try to remember this:
Even here, I’m not alone.
God’s work isn’t loud. It isn’t even visible. I believe it begins where hope is quietest. I believe that it starts when I’m still sitting in the dark. When I’m trying to feel something better is even possible.
Today I’m waiting.
I’m resting.
And I’m here in the dark, trusting that maybe this is holy ground.