Holy Saturday


            Holy Saturday is a day of mourning and waiting. There’s nothing to do. It is, after all, Sabbath. Holy Saturday is a postscript to Good Friday and a preface to Easter Sunday. Whether postscript or preface depends on where one enters it spiritually. Some years it will be the one and some the other. I share this for those (like me) entering from the Good Friday side this year. The Smashing Pumpkins song “Tales of a Scorched Earth” definitely parses Holy Saturday in a postscript mode. It’s an anthem for this day when it is experienced as the “end” for Jesus and also for us.

“Farewell goodnight last one out turn out the lights
And let me be, let me die inside
Let me know the way from of this world of hate in you
Cause the dye is cast, and the bitch is back
And we're all dead yeah we're all dead
Inside the future of a shattered past
I lie just to be real, and I'd die just to feel
Why do the same old things keep on happening?
Because beyond my hopes there are no feelings
Bless the martyrs and kiss the kids
For knowing better, for knowing this
Cause you're all whores and I'm a fag
And I've got no mother and I've got no dad
To save me the wasted, save me from myself
I lie just to be real, and I'd die just to feel
Why do the same old things keep on happening?
Because beyond my hopes there are no feelings
Everbody's lost just waiting to be found
Everyone's a thought just waiting to fade
So fuck it all cause I don't care
So what somehow somewhere we dared
To try to dare to dare for a little more
I lie just to be real, and I'd die just to feel
Why do the same old things keep on happening?
Because beyond my hopes there are no reasons”



Holy Saturday may and at times will be a postscript for Good Friday more than a preface to Easter. When all hope seems to amount to is a life “Inside the future of a shattered past,” Holy Saturday is a postscript to Good Friday. And when it is, we can only live with it, pensively, realistically. It is feels like death to us, it should. For death is the only place where resurrection blooms. 


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