Introduction: Linkage Between Holy Saturday and Existential Solitude?

[[Sister Laurel, you wrote, [[The ability to live resurrection life on the other side of the deep loss and anguished questions of Holy Saturday, and to do so for the sake of God and others, marks the authenticity of an eremitical vocation.]] I understand what you have written before about authentic eremitical vocations I think, but your reference to Holy Saturday surprises me. I figured you were not doing this just because of it being Lent and that it must have something to do with existential solitude, but I am just guessing. Could you explain your reference? Is your understanding of Holy Saturday linked to the experience of existential solitude? If so, I have never gotten this impression from homilies or reflections on the Triduum.]]

First, thanks for your comments and questions. I wasn't expecting such a question so soon so I can only give you something of a preliminary response, but your question is very fine and I did want to give you a little to think about until I can write more.

 Yes, I think the linkage between Holy Saturday and the experience of existential solitude is very significant. In order to approach that let me refer you first to an article I have posted here several times over the years as we move toward Holy Week and the Triduum. You can find it here: In Darkness We Wait in Hope. That piece speaks of the profound questions raised by the death of Jesus and the (potential and actual) loss of hope of the disciples who had trusted he was God's Messiah. It speaks of Holy Saturday as a day of loss and grief, but also one of nascent hope. It should point out, but does not, that it is also the day the disciples huddled hidden from the authorities, the meaningfulness and even the fact of their entire lives now thrown into doubt, and the brink of despair by the execution of the convicted criminal they thought was God's anointed.

As I recount some of that, I think you can hear the resonance it has with what I have written recently on existential solitude, the deep questions it involves, and the profound hunger for being and meaning it is associated with. What I wrote last week was:

For me, this is the deepest paradox of our existence, namely, that often we know God best in our hunger and it is in the sharpening of our hunger that we know we have been drawn closer to God by Godself. As a hermit, I am coming to know that on this side of death, the greatest consolation we can know is not so much that we are filled by God, but rather, that our hunger for God is developed, sharpened, and deepened. This profound hunger, however, can also be extremely painful since God is not only the ground and source of being, but of all meaning as well. To yearn for being and meaning and all these imply and require, can lead us to the very brink of despair unless and until we realize that, paradoxically, this agonizing hunger for God is itself the deepest sign of God's presence and love we can know, entirely unadulterated as it is by egoism. Jesus' cry of abandonment, especially in the presence of so much other suffering, is at once the measure of his greatest hunger and a sign of God's undoubted love echoing within him.

It was the experience of this hunger that opened me to a very much clarified understanding of my own existential solitude. Over the years, that solitude has been marked by an extended Holy Saturday experience. For instance, I remember once having a conversation with my director where I noted that the rhythm of my life never quite seemed to match the rhythms of the liturgical seasons and feasts. The Church was celebrating Easter and I was still living Holy Saturday, for instance! This was not a bad thing, but it was challenging, and I knew that I wanted to spend some time with the experience, studying, praying, meditating and writing about it. My director noted that it was likely that a lot of people in today's world experienced a similar challenge and that my own attention to this could benefit many. I believe she was correct; meanwhile, the explicit linkage between this extended experience of Holy Saturday and existential solitude per se only came full circle in what led to my writing the above-quoted paragraph last week.

The Triduum is a multi-layered, multi-faceted liturgy embodying and symbolizing many different moments and moods. Unfortunately, Holy Saturday and the loss, grief, bewilderment, liminality, and profound questions associated with the experience of Jesus' death seem to me not to be given sufficient time or space in our lives. We need time to question, to doubt, to wrestle with our own inadequate theologies, and to recognize this experience of deep struggle, questioning, grief, and even anguish-on-the-way-to-genuine-hope rooted in resurrection, is something our world generally does not allow us. Existential solitude is a universal reality. Every person knows it to some extent, yet really experiencing it in all of its depth is not something even our ordinary liturgies and homilies encourage or allow. 

Somehow, while it is critical to live in light of the resurrection, we seem to have forgotten that it is the certainty of Jesus' resurrection that truly allows and actually invites us to plumb the existential depths of need, hunger, emptiness, grief, betrayal, loss, doubt, potentialities, and so much more. Hermits retire to hermitages to undertake this perilous and ultimately promising journey. I think contemplatives in general do the same. The persons who do the kind of inner work I have been engaged in for the past number of years have the tools and opportunity to do similarly. The Church, in her wisdom, gave us the Triduum, and especially Holy Saturday (from after the Passion on Good Friday) to spend time getting in touch with this reality in a privileged way. I am sure I will be writing more about this over the next three weeks as we approach Easter. For now, I hope this preliminary response is sufficient!