Holy Saturday And The Harrowing of Hell

 

Today Christ lays in the tomb and harrows Hell. A Scottish poet, George Mackay Brown, speaks:

He went down the first step.

His lantern shone like the morning star.

Down and round he went

Clothed in his five wounds.

Solomon whose coat was like daffodils

Came out of the shadows.

He kissed Wisdom there, on the second step.

The boy whose mouth had been filled with harp-songs,

The shepherd king

Gave, on the third step, his purest cry.

At the root of the Tree of Man, an urn

With dust of apple-blossom.

Joseph, harvest-dreamer, counsellor of pharaohs

Stood on the fourth step.

He blessed the lingering Bread of Life.

He who had wrestled with an angel,

The third of the chosen,

Hailed the King of Angels on the fifth step.

Abel with his flutes and fleeces

Who bore the first wound

Came to the sixth step with his pastorals.

On the seventh step down

The tall primal dust

Turned with a cry from digging and delving.

Tomorrow the Son of Man will walk in a garden.

On the seventh step down the tall primal dust turned with a cry from digging and delving. Tomorrow the Son of Man will walk in a garden. Yes indeed.

God bless,

LSP

Holy Saturday

 

Here we are, on Holy Saturday, and the body of our Savior lies in the tomb, the fourteenth station. Consider this, by George Herbert:

Oh blessed body!  Whither art thou thrown? 

No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone?

So many hearts on earth, and yet not one

Receive thee?

Sure there is room within our hearts good store;

For they can lodge transgressions by the score:

Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door

They leave thee.

But that which shows them large, shows them unfit.

Whatever sin did this pure rock commit,

Which holds thee now? Who hath indicted it

Of murder?

Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee,

And missing this, most falsely did arraign thee;

Only these stones in quiet entertain thee,

And order.

And as of old, the law by heav’nly art,

Was writ in stone;  so thou, which also art

The letter of the word, find’st no fit heart

To hold thee.

Yet do we still persist as we began,

And so should perish, but that nothing can,

Though it be cold, hard, foul, from loving man

Withhold thee.

Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee. 

Herbert was a country parson,  as am I. There's clearly a lot to live up to, eh? 

Light v. Dark,

LSP