Holy Saturday: The Loneliness of Mary

Holy Saturday is the most silent day of the liturgical year. There is no Mass. The bells do not ring. The altars remain bare from the night before. The entire Church waits in silence, contemplating the closed tomb where the body of the Lord lies.

It is a day that bewilders. A day that unsettles. And yet, in that seemingly empty silence, beats the most faithful heart in all of salvation history: the heart of Mary.

Accompany Our Lady during Holy Saturday in her solitude. Meditate on her terrible sorrows and her unwavering hope in the Resurrection.

What is Holy Saturday?

Holy Saturday is the second day of the Paschal Triduum. It takes place between the death of Jesus, commemorated on Good Friday, and his Resurrection, which is announced at the Easter Vigil on Saturday night. It is the only day of the year when the Church does not celebrate any sacrament: neither the Eucharist, nor the Anointing of the Sick, nor Confirmation. Catholics wait in silence. They continue fasting and praying.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes this day as the time when Christ “remained in the tomb” and descended into hell to bring the announcement of salvation to the righteous who awaited him (nos. 632-635). It is, in the words of the Church, the day of the “great Sabbath,” the rest of God that anticipates the new creation.

Is Holy Saturday a day of fasting? Yes. The fast of Good Friday is prolonged, according to the tradition of the Church, until the Easter Vigil. It is the paschal fast par excellence: a bodily waiting that accompanies the waiting of the heart.

Mary, the Only One Who Believed

At the center of Holy Saturday stands a figure whom the Gospels barely mention on that day, but whom the Church has never forgotten: the Blessed Virgin Mary.

While the disciples are scattered in fear, while Peter bears the weight of his denial and the apostles struggle with the pain of their Master’s death, Mary remains. She waits. She believes.

The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy notes that Holy Saturday is the day when the Church unites with the Mother of the Lord in her sorrow and in her faith. The tradition of the Church has always recognized that Mary was, on that long Saturday, the only one who kept the flame of faith burning throughout the earth.

Her solitude is not despair. It is what spiritual authors have called a “solitude inhabited” by hope. Just as at the Annunciation she said yes to the life of the Word in her womb, now she says yes to his death with the same absolute surrender to the Father’s will. The fiat of Nazareth resounds in the silence of the tomb.

The Loneliness of Mary

The Church contemplates the solitude of Mary on Holy Saturday from three inseparable angles:

• Redemptive dimension. Mary participated intimately in the affliction of her Son, associating herself with his sacrifice with a maternal spirit. Her sorrow was not passive: it was an offering.
• Ecclesiological dimension. In Mary, the nascent Church survives the harshest trial: the death of her Head. She is, in the expression of the Directory, the “Church in person” who guards the mystery of redemption while the world seems to have forgotten it.
• Eschatological dimension. Her waiting is the model of the waiting of the entire Church for the definitive return of Christ at the end of time. Each time the Christian community waits in darkness, it does so with Mary’s eyes fixed on the promise.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux presents the Virgin on this day as the “Star of the Sea” who guides the shipwrecked of faith in the midst of the storm. Her faith was so vigorous, Bernard says, that it could sustain by itself the hope of all humanity on that day of darkness.

Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, in The Glories of Mary, goes even further. He affirms that Mary’s sorrows on Holy Saturday were a form of “martyrdom of the heart” that surpassed in intensity the physical sufferings of many martyrs. Mary not only weeps as a mother: she adores as a creature the lifeless body of her God. She recognizes in the wounds of Jesus the infinite price of our salvation.

The Via Matris

Popular piety has developed over the centuries concrete forms of accompanying Mary in her solitude. One of the richest and most recognized by the Church is the Via Matris: a journey that describes the suffering of the Blessed Virgin. It can be prayed in two ways: seven stations in honor of her seven sorrows or fourteen stations recalling the path that Mary traveled back, from the Holy Sepulcher to her home. It is a path in which she remembers and relives the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross.

The Congregation for Divine Worship recognizes it as a valid expression of the spirituality of the Christian people. Its final stations are the heart of the experience of Holy Saturday:

• Station XII — Mary at the Foot of the Cross: she receives the mission to be Mother of the Church through John.
• Station XIII — Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross: the moment of the Pietà, where Mary holds the lacerated body in her lap, recalling the days when she held him as a child in Bethlehem.
• Station XIV — Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb: the beginning of Mary’s solitude and the great waiting of Saturday.

By praying the Via Matris, the faithful learn from Mary to keep the mystery in their heart and to wait for God’s times without despairing.

The Procession of Silence

In many cities in Spain, Mexico, and Argentina, Holy Saturday is also lived in the streets. The Procession of Silence is one of the most moving acts of popular piety during Holy Week: there is no festive music or bells. Only the sound of chains or the steps of penitents. Participants dress in black and white, accompanying the image of the Virgin of Solitude in a procession that turns the entire city into a space of prayer.

This procession symbolizes the accompaniment of the Mystical Body—the Church—to its Head in the repose of death and to its Mother in solitude. The “King sleeps,” and his children keep vigil.

• You may be interested in: The Rosary of Our Lady of Sorrows

How to Live Holy Saturday?

Holy Saturday is not a day of transition between Friday and Sunday. It is a day with its own identity, which calls for concrete attitudes:

• Silence as Conversion

The silence of this day is not an emptiness of words, but an attentive listening. Silencing external and internal noises allows one to discover, in one’s own solitude, something of Mary’s state: the serene waiting of one who knows that the promise is true even though it has not yet been fulfilled.

• The Worship of the Cross

Although the principal adoration of the Cross occurs on Good Friday, the rubrics of the Roman Missal suggest that the Cross continues to be a point of reference during Saturday until the beginning of the Vigil. It is no longer seen as an instrument of torture but as the “tree of life” planted over the empty tomb of our sins.

• Active Waiting with Mary

Living Holy Saturday with Mary involves three concrete attitudes: repeating with the Virgin the words of her Son—“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”—; loving the Church in her moments of apparent weakness; and seeing the face of God in the suffering flesh of our brothers and sisters. Today is a special day to console those who feel alone.

• You may be interested in: The Holy Sudarium

Burial of the Lord and Loneliness of Mary (Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori)

There is no doubt that mothers feel in their hearts all the sorrows of their children, if they see them suffer or die; but one of the greatest is when the hour of farewell and separation arrives for them to be buried. This sorrow and most acute sword of Our Lady remains for us still to contemplate.

To do so, let us return again in consideration to Mount Calvary, where we left her embracing the dead body of her beloved Son, to whom she would say with great feeling: Son of my heart, how different from what you were do my eyes now see you and my arms embrace you! Those gracious glances of yours, and sweet words, and gentle signs of tender love, and the singular favors I received from you, have turned into so many arrows of pain, and the more such graces kindled the affection of my maternal breast, the more forcefully they now make me feel the sorrow of having lost you, for in losing you, I have lost everything, because you were my son, my father, my spouse, my life, and my soul.

Thus, closely united with him, she was dissolving in affliction and bitterness, for which reason, the disciples, fearing that her life would end there, determined to quickly take him from her arms and give him burial. They approach, then, and with pious and reverent force they separate him from the maternal lap, and embalming him with aromatic spices, they wrap him in a shroud prepared for the occasion, where the Lord was pleased to leave imprinted the marks of his sacred body. In this way they take him on their shoulders and begin to walk, accompanied by the celestial hierarchies, followed by the pious women, and in the midst the most sorrowful Virgin.

When they arrived and were already preparing to give the holy body burial, how gladly would the Mother have remained buried with him! But as this was not the divine will, they say that at least she wanted to enter and see the hollow where they were to place him, where they also left the nails and thorns. As they were about to lift the great stone that was to cover him, the disciples would say: Lady, look at him for the last time and give him the final farewell. —Alas, my beloved! —she exclaimed—. Receive from your anguished Mother the last farewell, together with these tears, and may my heart remain enclosed here with you.

Finally, they place the stone, and leave buried that divine body, which is the greatest treasure of heaven and earth.

Let us make a reflection here before moving forward.

If this Lady left her heart where she had her treasure, let us not place ours in the mud of creatures, but let us surrender it entirely to the most lovable Jesus, who, although after having lived on earth with men, returned to heaven, also remained glorious in the Most Holy Sacrament, to be continually in our company and possess as owner our hearts.

The most holy Virgin, before withdrawing from the tomb, blessed the sacred stone, saying thus: Fortunate stone, which now encloses him whom I had within my womb, I bless you a thousand times, and I entrust you to guard him carefully. Then, raising to heaven her voice and the affections of her soul, she said thus: Heavenly Father, in your hands remains this divine treasure, Son of your delights and Son of my heart. She looks again at the tomb, bids farewell once more to her beloved Son, and returns with that sad accompaniment, so tearful and so desolate, that she moved to tears many of those who saw her pass, and the disciples themselves and persons of the retinue wept now more from the sorrow and brokenness of the Mother than from the death of the Lord.

The pious women placed a black mantle over her, and as she passed before the cross, still bathed with the precious blood, she prostrated herself on the ground, and was the first creature to adore that holy wood, saying in this way: Most holy cross! I adore you and kiss you devoutly, for you are no longer infamous wood, but throne of love and altar of mercy, consecrated with the blood of the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, sacrificed on you for the salvation of the human race.

As soon as she arrived at her poor dwelling, she turned her gaze in all directions, and not seeing her most sweet Son, the deeds and examples of such a holy life were vividly represented to her, the sweet memory of that glorious night of his sacred birth, the tender embraces she gave him in her maternal bosom, the intimate and gentle conversations for so many years in the house of Nazareth, the tender love with which they mutually corresponded, the loving glances and the words of eternal life that came from his divine mouth.

But then the painful tragedy of that sad day was renewed in her with greater feeling and vividness: the nails, thorns and deep wounds, the torn flesh, the fleshless bones, the thirsty mouth and the darkened and dead eyes. What a bitter night!

She asked the beloved disciple: John, where is your divine Lord and Master? She asked Magdalene: Daughter, where is your beloved? Who has taken away our only good? Who has placed us in such bitter solitude? Her virginal eyes weep, all weep with her.

And you, soul, what are you doing? Tell her finally: Lady, I am the one who should weep, and not you; I am the guilty one, and you are innocent. Allow me to at least accompany you in your weeping and solitude. Fac ut tecum lugeam. Your tears are born of love. May mine spring from the force of sorrow and repentance for my sins. These and other similar affections you must tell her with your lips and heart. Doing so, you can hope for the happy fate that we will hear recounted in the example that follows.

EXAMPLE.

Father Engelgrave tells of a religious so tormented by scruples that they sometimes placed him at the gates of despair; but he availed himself of the favor of the Virgin of Sorrows, of whom he was very devout, and with the contemplation of the sorrows of the sovereign Lady, he felt that his own were relieved.

Thus he spent his life, and the hour of death arrived, in which the demon pressed him with more violence and fury than ever; but when the good religious suffered most, and was in greatest danger of despairing, behold the Most Holy Mary appears to him saying these sweet words:

My son, why do you consume yourself with anguish and sorrow, you who so often consoled me? Come, rejoice, for my divine Son sends me to console you now. The happy hour has arrived for you. Come with me to heaven.

With whose most gentle words, the storm dissipated in an instant and filled with joy, he delivered his soul into the hands of his beloved Mother to be happy eternally.

PRAYER

Sorrowful Mother, may I have the happiness of accompanying you in your sorrows, joining with your tears my own, with continual memory and tender devotion to the passion of Jesus and yours, so that in weeping your sorrows and his I may occupy and consecrate all the time that remains of my life, hoping confidently that in the hour of my agony they will give me strength and courage not to despair of my salvation in view of the many sins with which I have offended God. Through the sorrows of both I trust to obtain pardon, perseverance, and glory, where with you, loving Mother, I will sing forever the mercies of God. So be it.

Do you want to live the Paschal Triduum with devotion? Here are some articles that may help you do so:

• Holy Week timeline: Discover what Holy Week is, what is celebrated each day, and how to live the Paschal Triduum according to the Catholic Church. A clear, complete guide.
  
• What happened on Holy Thursday?: What is Holy Thursday and what did Jesus do on that day? Learn the meaning, liturgy, and traditions of the day that begins the Paschal Triduum.
• What is the Good Friday Liturgy like?: In this post, we explain each moment of the Liturgy of the Passion step by step.
  
• The 6 Appearances of Easter Sunday: Did you know that the Gospel narrates five appearances of Jesus on Easter Sunday? And that some saints speak of a sixth appearance?