Darkness. Dust. Silence. Solitude. Passivity. Powerlessness. Joylessness. The deprivation of all strength and vitality. To be, but to “be” in such a condition as to be deprived of everything but being itself. To be, but to “be” as if one were not. Such are the descriptions of the realm of the dead (Sheol/Hades) in the Old Testament, and such was the realm to which Jesus went on Holy Saturday. During his earthly life, Jesus had been in solidarity with the living; on Holy Saturday, he entered into solidarity with the dead, so that he might forge a path for his fellow human beings out of the realm of death and into eternal life with God the Father.
In Mysterium Paschale, Hans Urs von Balthasar reflects deeply on the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, including an extensive meditation on Holy Saturday, the “third day” of the Holy Triduum and the one that has received the least attention from theologians. Balthasar’s reflections on the Paschal Mystery were partly informed and influenced by the mystical experiences of Adrienne von Speyr, who received numerous mystical graces after her conversion to Catholicism, including stigmata and “an experience of the interior sufferings of Jesus, in all their fullness and diversity” every year during the Holy Triduum.
Balthasar begins his discussion of Holy Saturday with the passage from the Apostles’ Creed where we affirm that Jesus “descended into hell.” Balthasar encourages us to interpret the word “descended” in more of a passive than an active sense here, because he wants us to focus on the fact that Jesus was, in his human nature, really and truly dead on Holy Saturday. According to Balthasar, the active agent in Jesus’ descent into hell was God the Father, just as God the Father was the active agent in Jesus’ Resurrection (Matt. 16:21, 17:9; John 2:22, 5:21; Acts 3:15) and Ascension (Mark 16:19; Acts 1:2, 9–11, 22; 1 Tim. 3:16).
Jesus felt the pain and loss of separation from God far more acutely than any other human being ever has or ever will.
Jesus, dead in his human nature, experienced all of the aspects of death that all human beings who had died before him experienced: darkness, silence, solitude, passivity, powerlessness, etc. Balthasar notes that it was necessary that Jesus experience human death because “the one who was to receive power and judgment over the living and the dead needed to have come to know all the states of human life, including that of being dead.” This assertion is consonant with St. Irenaeus’ claim that only what has been endured is healed and saved, and St. Thomas Aquinas’ statement that Jesus had to endure death so that “he might bear the entire penalty of sin, so as to expiate the entire guilt.”
But Jesus didn’t just experience the penalty of sin; he experienced that penalty to its greatest possible degree. The penalty of sin is not just death; it is separation from God. And for Jesus, the separation from God he experienced in his descent into hell was more painful than it could possibly be for any other human being, since Jesus’ whole life had consisted in loving unity with the Father from all eternity. Thus, Jesus felt the pain and loss of separation from God far more acutely than any other human being ever has or ever will. As Balthasar put it,
[Jesus] suffers more deeply than an ordinary man is capable of suffering, even were he condemned and rejected by God, because only the incarnate Son knows who the Father really is and what it means to be deprived of him, to have lost him (to all appearances) forever.
Jesus descended into the farthest reaches of hell, so that even the sinner who tries to run as far away from God as possible will ultimately find himself running into the arms of Christ. Jesus endured the greatest possible separation from God so that he might bring as many sinners as possible back to God. St. Athanasius gave bold expression to this claim:
The Lord has touched all parts of the creation . . . so that each might find the Logos everywhere, even the one who has strayed into the world of demons.
By descending into the deepest possible depths of godforsakenness, Jesus has opened up for us the path back to God. Again, Balthasar stated,
from Holy Saturday onward, death becomes purification. On that day, the dead Lord opened up a way out of eternal forlornness and into heaven: the fire that purifies the dead toward greater love. Under the Old Covenant, that did not exist; for everyone, there was only Sheol, the place of being dead. Descending into this, Christ has thrown open the entranceway to the Father.
I should perhaps note here that Balthasar has been accused by some people of being a universalist (i.e., claimed all human beings would ultimately be saved), but anyone who reads his book Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?, including Bishop Robert Barron’s foreword in the most recent edition, will realize that such was absolutely not the case. Balthasar rightly asserts that we do not know if everyone will be saved but that we are called to hope and pray that all might be saved, in line with 1 Tim. 2:4 and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1821).
Indeed, such a prayer seems particularly appropriate to include in a spiritual meditation on Holy Saturday. Both St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Thomas Aquinas encouraged us to “participate in spirit in the Lord’s descent” or, as Balthasar expressed it, to accompany Jesus in the extreme solitude of his death by spiritually entering into a state of “being dead with the dead God.” May I suggest each of us spend at least a little time on Holy Saturday reflecting on the beauty and depth of the divine love that would go to the farthest extremes of death and hell for our sake and for the sake of all of our fellow human beings? The more fully we allow ourselves to accompany Jesus in spirit on this most holy of all Saturdays, the more fully we can then rejoice in the annual celebration of our Lord’s (and therefore our) Easter passage from death into eternal life.