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Holy Saturday
March 30
GOD’S SURPASSING LOVE
A homily by St Augustine 7
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Today, my dearest friends, there is every reason for heaven to rejoice and earth to be glad. It is a day on which more light shines forth from the tomb than rays from the sun. When our Lord and Savior was born as one of us he brought light into the world; so also today, being dead in the body, he has illumined the underworld with the powerful presence of his divinity as well as of his human soul. Today at the Lord’s visitation there is leaping and dancing in the nether regions over the fulfillment of the prophecy: The people that sat in darkness(that is to say the whole human race enveloped in the gloom of Sheol) has seen a great light. He who created Adam has this day sought him out in the underworld, and by his own power has set him free.
Wonderful beyond words is the loving kindness of our God! Death had indeed invaded Paradise, but life has now conquered the abyss, and by assuming our mortality the Son of God has trodden underfoot the law that all must die. Thus he has made good the prophet’s assertion: O death, I will be your death! Those whom you have caused to die through sin I will gather up from that place of eternal ruin, and by dying myself I will deliver them from everlasting death.
Look now at the author of our undoing! With what snares he is entangled and fettered! As he deceived us, so he is himself deceived; in the very act of killing he is destroyed.
When the Lord’s body was laid in the tomb, he himself descended into the lowest and most hidden abode of the infernal regions. There, where he was presumed to be held captive, he bound death fast, and so broke the chains of all who had died. And from that place whence none had ever returned before, not even alone, he carried off an immense with which he penetrated the heavens.
See what tremendous things God’s surpassing love has accomplished for our healing and restoration! For our sake he was led like a sheep to the slaughter, having taken upon himself the evils of this present life in order to bestow upon us the good things of eternity.
7 Sermo Mai 146: PLS 2, 1242-1243( CL I p 168-169).