Holy Saturday is perhaps the most mysterious day in the liturgical calendar. On this day, God is silent; He is in the tomb. The Church is silent as well; no liturgies are celebrated for the day. From the end of the Good Friday liturgy to the beginning of the Easter Vigil, the Church contemplates the mystery: Our Lord is dead and buried. The greatest evil ever committed just occurred – the murder of the God-man – and yet it appears that God does nothing in response.
Aren’t we now, in our time, living a long Holy Saturday? Within the Church, we have Church leaders who embrace, or at least wink at, heresy and immoral practices. We have parishes that practice what can only be considered a fundamentally different religion than Catholicism. Outside the Church, we have the growing threat of militant Islam. We have no political candidates in this election year who want Christ the King to reign in our society. We have a popular culture which has become a cesspool of immorality and insanity. Where is God in all this? Why is He silent? We repeat the cry of the prophets, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and thou wilt not hear?” (Habakkuk 1:2).
