The hours following the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ brought anything but sunshine and rainbows for those who had given up everything and placed their full faith and trust in Him as their long-awaited Messiah. Darkness and despair overwhelmed them. A thick blanket of fear covered the apostles, who went into hiding, terrified they would be next in line for the cross. Although Christ Himself told them before His Passion that He would die and rise again, they failed to grasp the true, literal meaning of His words.
They did not cling to the hope of Christ’s resurrection. Uncertainty and sadness crushed their dreams and spirits into a fine powder. Every shred of hope they had lay dead in a tomb, sealed behind a stone. The Shepherd had been struck. The flock scattered. The sheep wandered lost.
People often overlook Holy Saturday, despite it standing as the most human day in the history of the Church. Few feel comfortable sitting with darkness and hopelessness, even though life on earth brims with such moments. Christians tend to focus on Good Friday, when Jesus Christ offered Himself on the Cross for the salvation of mankind, and on Easter Sunday, when the Lord of Glory rose from the dead, proving He was God in human flesh and the conqueror of Death itself.
It is easy to see why Holy Saturday fades into the background. Jesus lay dead. Heaven remained silent. Evil appeared to triumph over good. To the apostles, their Messiah seemed to have failed. No angel appeared to explain what had happened or to give instructions for what came next. They waited in the dark.
But that darkness, that despair, that hopelessness, did not last.
On Easter Sunday—the third day after Christ’s Crucifixion—the tomb stood empty. Death had suffered a fatal blow. What first appeared to be the end revealed itself as a necessary passage to something infinitely greater than the disciples could have imagined: the salvation of mankind. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Luke 24:5–6).
An angel spoke these words. Heaven no longer remained silent. A messenger of good news arrived. Fear gave way to joy. Cowards who fled when Jesus was arrested soon found courage through the Resurrection and testified to the Gospel even unto horrific deaths. Christ transformed lives. Mourning turned into celebration.
And that pattern continued from that moment forward throughout human history.
Saint Paul tells us, “If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Romans 6:8). Resurrection does not bypass death. It does not skip the dark parts of life. It passes straight through them. Christ’s disciples learned this truth through terror, grief, and confusion. God allowed them to bear the full weight of loss so they could later understand the full power of victory.
Saint Augustine, one of the greatest philosophers Christianity ever produced, once wrote that God “judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” At first glance, the Crucifixion looked like the triumph of injustice. In reality, it became the instrument of our salvation.
This truth matters because each of us experiences our own Holy Saturdays. Some seasons of life feel like trudging through a desert. When we pray, our words seem to hit the ceiling and fall back to the floor instead of reaching the ears of God. Suffering sometimes stretches on endlessly with no visible purpose. Illness, betrayal, addiction, financial disaster, loneliness—these tomb-like moments convince us that something good in our lives has died forever.
We begin to wonder whether we were fools for ever believing in the goodness of God. In those moments, darkness appears to have conquered. But the Resurrection of Jesus Christ reminds us that darkness never claims the final word. The stone rolled away. The night ended. Jesus rose.
And because our Savior lives, our darkness—no matter how deep or how long—remains only temporary.
