I thought I’d post a few times today and tomorrow about the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and what it means to me and to some of the authors and fictional and actual characters that I have on my bookshelves. I’m going to take turns blogging and house-cleaning and see how that goes.

“Holy Saturday is the ‘no man’s land’ between death and Resurrection, but One has entered into this ‘no man’s land.'”

“Christ strode through the gate of our final loneliness; in his Passion he went down into the abyss of our abandonment. Where no voice can reach us any longer, there is he. Hell is thereby overcome, or, to be more accurate, death, which was previously hell, is hell no longer. Neither is the same any longer because there is life in the midst of death, because love dwells in it.”

“I find myself before the last leg of my life’s journey, and I don’t know what awaits me. I know, however, that the light of God is here, that He is risen, that his light is stronger than every darkness; that the goodness of God is stronger than every evil in this world.”

The above quotes are from Pope Benedict XVI, the now-retired primate of the Catholic Church.

“But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples . . . ” ~Justin Martyr, 150 AD.

So today is the “day of Saturn”, no-man’s land, Holy Saturday, Sabbatum Sanctum, the time between times. And I sometimes find myself living in that between time, that no-man’s land. I know and believe in the resurrection, but there are things in my life and especially in the life of my family that are shrouded in darkness. I live in hope, knowing that the resurrection of Christ is true and trustworthy, but I also live in the reality of a dark Saturday in which my hopes have not yet been realized in many ways.

Yes, it IS finished. He has done it. Life conquered Death. “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.” (I Peter 3:18-19)

But wait and watch with me for a little while on this Holy Saturday as I pray for those I love who have not yet experienced the loving power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Some of those I love are still dead and in the tomb of their own sin, and although I believe in a resurrection for them, too, it hasn’t happened yet.

It’s still Saturday. And Jesus is here.