One of the controversial contributions of the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was a renewed focus on what happened on Holy Saturday—that is, from the time Jesus was laid in the tomb until the time of his resurrection. Von Balthasar’s reflections are somewhat unclear, ranging from what it meant to experience death to what it meant for Jesus to “descend into hell” (as the Apostles’ Creed puts it).
I am not going to get into von Balthasar’s ruminations, but I am going to steal his title. Because I think there is a mystery of Holy Saturday that is far too neglected, yet one that has been part of the Christian spiritual tradition for centuries: being laid in the tomb.
The traditional Way of the Cross ends with the fourteenth station: “Jesus is laid in the tomb.” In Central Europe and its counterpart ethnic parishes in America, you will still see elaborate tomb scenes set up for Easter, often with parishioners keeping vigil at the grave. If you go to western Brittany in France, there are dozens of parishes dating from the seventeenth century, a time when devotion to Jesus’ passion was very strong in that region. In almost every one of these little country churches, you’ll find a sculpture, if not a shrine, to “Jesus is laid in the tomb,” often beautifully depicting all the people who followed Jesus to that garden grave.
Now, what do we think of Holy Saturday? To be frank, I think many consider it just a “holding pattern,” a chronological interlude between the “big stuff” on Holy Thursday/Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Practically, it’s temporal filler.
But if Jesus is our model, he who “fully reveals man to himself” (as Vatican II and St. John Paul II were both wont to repeat), then what is there to learn from Holy Saturday?
We can learn about the Christian way in death.
The Church says that burial remains the preferred Christian way of dealing with the dead. It says that because it believes that the Christian ought to imitate Christ in all things, including his way in death. Jesus was laid in a tomb. All during Lent, we concluded the Stations of the Cross with that affirmation.
Yes, the Church permits cremation. It permits it, but it does not encourage it. The Church encourages burial.
Why?
First, Jesus himself lay in a tomb. Isn’t the “imitation of Christ” sufficient?
But second, entombment points to the sacredness of Jesus’ body. It was not burned like trash. The Hebrew word “Gehenna” in fact comes from the Valley of Hinnom, outside Jerusalem, where it was traditionally said that fires were kept stoked to consume the garbage and cadavers dumped there. In usual Roman practice, the bodies of crucified criminals were not usually given back to their families. They were either removed and thrown anonymously into a mass grave like at Hinnom, or they were left on their crosses as carrion for birds and other animals of prey until the cross was needed for somebody else. One Roman author called the crucified cibus corvorum, “crow food.”
The Gospels make the point that Pontius Pilate released Jesus’ body to Joseph of Arimathea, who, with Nicodemus and the little Calvary party, laid it in Joseph’s garden tomb. Jesus’ body was treated with reverence, with ministrations the ladies planned to complete Sunday morning once that “solemn” Sabbath had passed.
Jesus’ body is not a husk. It is recognized to be part of who Jesus is (which is why the apostles take such pains to affirm that the Jesus they encounter on Easter morning has continuity with his human body—anything else would have made no sense to a Jew of that time).
In a world increasingly tainted by a kind of gnostic, dualistic separatism, where people even now imagine themselves “born in the wrong body,” Christians do not have the luxury of being indifferent to the fate of our human remains. The cost is too high.
Speaking of costs, however, I recognize that the likely ultimate defense of cremation is “it’s cheaper!”
I will not diminish economic realities, but neither will I multiply them. Jesus was a young man. He was thirty-three when he died. He was “Jesus the Nazarene,” as the titulus on his cross put it, not “Jesus the Jerusalemite.” Even if there was a family tomb, Nazareth was ninety miles away. Mary was a widow. If Joseph of Arimathea, “a secret disciple,” did not show up, what would they have done? But can you imagine them telling the centurion, “Well, there’s nothing we can do” and leaving him for Hinnom?
“To bury the dead” is a corporal work of mercy, and we need more Josephs of Arimathea today. We also need preparation—including ecclesiastical preparation—for that final necessity. Years ago, many ethnic parishes had immigrant insurance funds, where a worker in a dangerous job like the mines or factories could pay in for the minimal coverage of a box and a grave for a “decent Christian burial.” Is the Church incapable of contracting with insurance providers to offer the average Catholic an economical “basic burial costs” insurance policy?
On Holy Saturday, perhaps the mystery of our reflection today is this: How might we rediscover the full truth of a “decent Christian burial”?