Art: Reflections on a Holy Saturday

As I look over Handel's Messiah, I think track 31 is the place that sort of describes the Saturday between the the Crucifixion and Resurrection. It would fit in a Good Friday mediation. Track 32 belongs with Sunday and Resurrection

Isaiah 53:8b
he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of [Thy] people was He stricken.

Jesus was taken off the Cross and prepared and placed into the tomb.

One of the most iconic works of art is Mary, the mother of Jesus, holding the dead Jesus.

Michelangelo's Pieta (1499), St. Peter's Basilica
Image source: http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/pieta.html

On Saturday, what did it feel like to be Mary?

Would she replay in her mind all she saw on Friday?

What did it feel like to be Peter?

He had promised to die for Jesus and he had denied Jesus and Jesus was dead.

What did it feel like to be any of the followers of Jesus?

Did they meet together and talk about what had just happened?

Did any of them think about the times Jesus talked about dying and rising from the dead?

On Saturday, their thoughts were on this: he was cut off out of the land of the living...

I wonder to what degree they thought about the second half: for the transgression of Thy people was He stricken?

I wonder to what degree they thought about what Jesus said in Mark 8:31 and in other places: He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.

Were they simply lost in grief and forgetting all Jesus taught about the bigger picture?

I could hardly blame them.

On Saturday, their thoughts may well have only been about the last images from Friday.

Image source: http://www.uga.edu/cc/stations/station14.html