Luke 23:56: “Then they returned and prepared spices and perfumes. They rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.” [HCSB]
We have Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Resurrection Sunday. (Maundy is an old word meaning ‘command’ and is taken from Jesus’ commands in John’s Gospel on the night before He died.) But what do they call the Saturday in between Good Friday and Easter? I looked it up and most simply label it Holy Saturday. I prefer to call it Silent Saturday.
Luke is the only Gospel writer who says anything about that long Sabbath day between Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. He says that the women who watched where they laid Jesus went home and prepared spices to anoint His body after the Sabbath and then they rested in obedience to the commandment.
I often wonder on this day just how much rest they actually got. I know grief and shock and His followers must have been in the thralls of it. Some may have sat in numbness, others may have wept quietly, while others may have talked or expressed their grief in other ways. But grieve they must have.
This may have been the darkest of all days before the eternal dawn that broke forth. Their hope was stunned by Friday’s events.
Silent Saturday. It’s a day to contemplate what our lives would be like if the resurrection had not happened.
