The Harrowing of Hell Today is Holy Saturday. It’s a day often associated in our minds with busy preparations for Easter Day. The church is cleaned. The flower arrangers are out in force. The air drenched with the sweet smell of lilies. The church is redecorated with its rich and colourful hangings after the spartan observance of Good Friday. And yet this frantic busyness often does not do justice to the theological significance of Holy Saturday. But perhaps this year has been different. Perhaps this year we might have discovered something of the silent desolation of Holy Saturday. Perhaps we may have shared the sense of disorientation and fear that the first disciples experienced on the day after the death of Christ. As we wrestle to make sense of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still absorbing the news of the death of almost 1000 people in one day. Our hearts are filled with grief for all those who have lost loved ones in recent days. When we contemplate such pain and suffering, the theology of Holy Saturday resonates with us because it speaks of the hiddenness of God. It challenges us to wrestle with Nietzsche’s cruel jibe that ‘God is dead!’ Is that the real message of Good Friday? And yet, in the early church, theologians spoke of Holy Saturday in terms of Christ’s descent into hell. We say so often in the Apostles’ Creed, ‘he descended into hell’, and we do not even begin to contemplate what that means. For the theologians of the early church, it meant that Christ reached into the depths of hell and rescued the righteous who had already died so that they too could share in the mystery of salvation. Christ still reaches into the depths of hell. The mystery of Easter teaches us that Christ reaches into the dark depths of hell in order to bring us life again. On Easter Day we usually light the Easter Candle at St Mary’s. This year I invite you to mark Easter Day by lighting a candle in a safe place at home. The Easter Candle is a sign and a symbol of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When we do this, we are reminded that the fire of God’s love engulfs and overcomes the darkness. There is nothing lost that God cannot find again. Nothing dead that cannot live again in his presence. No heart so dark or hopeless that it cannot be enlightened and brought back, warmed back to the life of love. Podcast for Easter Day The podcast for Easter Day is available here and by clicking the link below. My thanks to everyone who has contributed to the podcasts in the course of Holy Week, particularly Ana-Maria Niculcea, our Communications Officer, who has brought a high degree of professionalism to this task. It has been so good to hear familiar voices in the course of the last few days. Thank you! Coffee Hour There will be a Zoom Coffee Hour on Easter Day at 12noon. Details will be distributed to all those who have joined the relevant online mailing list. If you would like to be added to this mailing list, please fill in our Keeping in Touch form. | 
