The promise of Holy Saturday

National Post, 16 April 2022

On Holy Saturday above all, the Christian is reminded to think about the tomb differently. It may be an enduring home, but not an eternal one

As my colleague Barbara Kay recently pointed out in these pages, the discovery last year of unmarked graves in Kamloops has not, in the intervening months, been further investigated.

Ground-penetrating radar “did not find bodies, but rather soil disruptions in a nearby apple orchard,” she wrote. “The anthropologist who oversaw the scans cautiously theorized that there were likely 200 ‘probable burials’ — not specifying age — based on the disturbances. But only excavation could provide further evidence of anything, and no excavation has yet been done.”

That does not however, change the underlying reality of residential schools. If justice and reconciliation were worthy pursuits before the Kamloops discovery, they remain so, and would have been so even if the discovery had never happened. When children were maltreated in life, that remains a truth in need of reconciliation, even if their resting places in death are uncertain.

At some point, in the search for truth, some of the soil disturbances should be investigated in a discreet and decorous manner, fully respecting the bodies of those who may be buried there. The truth deserves a dignified examination.

All of this is suggestive of deeper truth on Holy Saturday, that day of silence when Jesus lays in the tomb between the gory glory of Good Friday and the radiant resurrection of Easter Sunday morning. The day of the tomb is often overlooked in the understandable hurry to get to the first light of Easter morning.

The Christian faith professes that there was a real tomb, with a real body. There was a disturbance to be sure, but not from the outside in, as in ground penetrating radar, but from the inside out, as in a radiating explosion of life.

Tombs are meant to be undisturbed. The metaphysical and religious desire that the deceased should rest in peace is expressed in the custom of keeping the graves tranquil. Burial grounds are to be cared for, but left alone. Building over them, even having a picnic in them, offends. That’s why any further investigation in Kamloops requires the utmost delicacy.

Holy Saturday presents the eyes of faith with a world-changing contrast. The tomb is secure, even guarded to prevent anyone disturbing it. And yet, the disturbance comes. The guards do not disturb the tomb; the tomb disturbs the guards.

If a grave is found not to contain a body, perhaps it was never a grave, or the body may have deteriorated entirely.

The promise of Holy Saturday is that the tomb will be empty, not due to deterioration but to resurrection.

The Kamloops story resonated as it did because we are all heading to the grave, some sooner, some later.

Continue reading at the National Post.