Holy Saturday - the essential hiatus in the story of redemption, when the Son of God entered into the abyss, and when the death throes of death were entered into and endured; Holy Saturday, when the reality of the Son being made sin who knew no sin, fell with tragic force on the heart of God. Some of the most profound theology of the past few decades has tried to take seriously the suffering of the Son who died, and the suffering of the Father bereft of His only begotten Son, and that anguish communicated within the eternal communion of the Triune God through the Spirit.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar's Mysterium Paschale is a masterpiece of reflection on the theology of Easter, and the significance of Holy Saturday as the quiet, empty, menacing abyss where death, loss and defeat intimate the triumph of the tragic, the death of God, with a persuasive finality; Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God and his later reflections, explore with theological courage, perhaps even some theological recklessness the meaning of Christ's death for the inner life of the Triune communion of love that is God; Alan Lewis, whose Between the Cross and the Resurrection was written during the last months of his life when he was dying of cancer, and out of his suffering came a book of immense integrity, of movingly engaged theology, the theological and personal testimony of one who built his own hope on the mystery of life overcoming death, enduring light rescinding final darkness, redeeming love eclipsing the power of sin.
Here is one paragraph from the end of Lewis's remarkably penetrating and contemplative understanding of the paschal mystery:
For surely it is only in the mode of prayer ---in meditation, reflection, and straining of the heart and ear for a word of God beyond human speechlessness, that one could finally do justice to a narrative like ours which at its centre-point has God buried in the grace on Easter Saturday. What is there left to do but pray, if the story of God's own death and burial be true? (p. 463)
What Lewis is suggesting is not prayer that is fuelled by certainty, but prayer that grows out of the bewilderment and speechlessness that must overcome mind and heart when the implications of Holy Saturday are thought and felt.
All of which reminded me of Denise Levertov's poem, 'Oblique Prayer', a poet's take on spiritual truth that is too profound for words, too elusive for certainties, and a poet's honesty about those experiences of God that speak more of absence than presence. The poem is set out in a way that allows the text to convey the fragmented, at times fearful, yet finally hopeful searching of those for whom Holy Saturday speaks of God's own dark night.
Oblique Prayer
Not the profound dark
night of the soul
.
and not the austere desert
to scorch the heart at noon,
grip the mind
in teeth of ice at evening
.
but gray,
a place
without clear outlines,
.
the air
heavy and thick
.
the soft ground clogging
my feet if I walk,
sucking them downwards
if I stand.
.
have you been there?
Is it
.
a part of human-ness
.
to enter
no man's land?
.
I can remember
(is it asking you
that
makes me remember?)
even here
.
the blessed light that caressed the world
before I stumbled into
this place of mere
not-darkness.
This Holy Saturday, I am glad to pay tribute to Alan Lewis, an alumnus of New College, Edinburgh, and one whose theology was lived and written in the presence of God. The book cover shows Alan's memorial window at Austin Presbyterian Seminary. I have bought his book three times - because I have twice given my own copy away as a gift - there aren't many book you buy three times.
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