Mary Molloy 4/19/25
Join Our Email List
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
The Empty Tomb Project is a non-profit organization – 501(c)(3) – please support our mission by making a tax-deductible donation. DONATE HERE
Read “Empty Tomb Project: The Magazine”
Let Us Begin: New Book on the Life and Power of St. Francis
“What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled…. The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.” (An Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday)
Holy Saturday stands as one of the most hauntingly beautiful days of Holy Week in my experience. There is a profound silence during this day when the normal routines of Church life are suspended. The liturgies of Holy Thursday and Good Friday have left us grieving Jesus’ departure, yet within the stillness that follows the Good Friday’s liturgy lies a quiet hope of glorious joy to come.
I first felt the full weight of grief and death when I was four years old. My grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack, and his absence, along with the solemnity of his funeral, deeply affected me. There is something about mourning at a tomb that touches the soul’s depths—a place where we intuitively recognize that the separation of body and soul contradicts our created purpose. Though I lacked words for this feeling as a child, I remember continuing to experience the mourning it time passed and my grandfather’s absence became woven into the fabric of my life. Grief creates its own silence and stillness. No cliché or platitude can fill the emptiness that death unveils.
When I read this Ancient Homily in the Liturgy of the Hours on Holy Saturday, I am always moved by the image of God raising up those who have been sleeping for ages, causing the underworld to tremble. Death and tragedy often feel like overwhelming defeats. In recent years, I’ve lost close friends and my father suddenly. Two of these friends were among the kindest, most vibrant women I’ve known in my short life. Two of my dear friends from college were diagnosed with aggressive cancer and died within months. Witnessing their transformation from vibrant health to profound weakness shook me to my core. When these friends and my father passed away, that familiar feeling of grief and the stillness of the tomb hit me yet again and this time even more deeply.
There exists a different kind of stillness in death when viewed through the reality of the Resurrection. Pope Francis articulated this beautifully during World Youth Day 2023 when speaking about the theological virtue of Hope:
“Hope, a light shining in the night In the Christian tradition of the Paschal Triduum, Holy Saturday is the day of hope. Situated between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, it is a kind of no man’s land between the despair of the disciples and their joy on Easter morning. It is the place where hope is born … .God does not simply look with compassion on our experiences of death, or call to us from afar; he enters into our moments of hell like a light that shines in the darkness and overcomes it.”
What moves me most deeply about God’s love is His willingness to descend into our despair. He doesn’t remain distant or indifferent. Rather, compelled by profound love and compassion, He enters the depths of hell itself to raise humanity to the glory for which we were created—the glory of eternal beatitude and face-to-face relationship with God. Death’s sting is diminished because Christ has conquered its darkness and transformed it into a passage to glory through His sacrifice on the Cross. The darkness of Good Friday gives birth to Easter Sunday’s joy, with Holy Saturday as the sacred space of waiting in silence for the glory of Resurrection to be revealed.
For those with hope with certain faith, we know that beyond the dark stillness of Holy Saturday awaits the glorious celebration of Easter morning. This is the reality we must integrate into our daily lives. Even the most brutal injustice, painful tragedy, or devastating loss will ultimately pass away as the victorious Christ becomes clear to us who now see only dimly in the tomb’s dark stillness.
The earth trembles with both fear and longing for the fullness of the joy we were created to experience. When my friends died of cancer, overwhelming sadness settled deeply within me until I recalled our conversations about their hope of seeing Jesus face to face and experiencing complete restoration. They knew how to live in Holy Saturday’s hope, while I, fixed only on the tomb’s dark walls rather than looking upward in hope, remained trapped in Good Friday’s misery.
The tomb calls us to both grieve and surrender control. For me, the reality of death—especially its often unfair timing—strikes my heart with tremendous force. Yet Jesus embraced this profound suffering not merely to accompany us but to raise us from it. We are called to rise from death into Light, who is Love Himself. If this Holy Week finds you in darkness—whether from grief, injustice, or hopelessness—know that Christ is within you, raising you through His Sacred Heart, which He gives to us completely in the Sacraments.
Mary Molloy teaches Religion at a Catholic high school on Long Island. She received her BA & MA in Catechetics and Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She has spent the last 15 years in ministry both international and domestically. Her favorite thing is to serve the poor and spend quality time with her loved ones.
Join Our Email List
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Empty Tomb Project 