Saturday of Holy Week (Holy Saturday)

Christ became obedient for us even to death, death on a cross.

JESUS CHRIST … SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE, WAS CRUCIFIED, DIED AND WAS BURIED; HE DESCENDED INTO HELL.

(The Apostles' Creed)

On Holy Saturday the Church waits at the Lord's tomb in prayer and fasting, meditating on His Passion and Death and on His descent into Hell, and awaiting His Resurrection.

Lord my God, I call for help by day;

I cry at night before you.

Let my prayer come into your presence.

O turn your ear to my cry.

For my soul is filled with evils;

my life is on the brink of the grace.

I am reckoned as one in the tomb:

I have reached the end of my strength,

like one alone among the dead;

like the slain lying in their graves;

like those you remember no more,

cut off, as they are, from your hand.

You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,

in places that are dark, in the depths.

Your anger weighs down upon me:

I am drowned beneath your waves.

You have taken away my friends

and made me hateful in their sight.

Imprisoned, I cannot escape;

my eyes are sunken with grief.

I call to you, Lord, all day long;

to you I stretch out my hands.

Will you work your wonders for the dead?

Will the shades stand and praise you?

Will your love be told in the grace

or your faithfulness among the dead?

Will your wonders be known in the dark

or your justice in the land of oblivion?

As for me, Lord, I call to you for help:

in the morning my prayer comes before you.

Lord, why do you reject me?

Why do you hide your face?

Wretched, close to death from my youth,

I have borne your trials; I am numb.

Your fury has swept down upon me;

your terrors have utterly destroyed me.

They surround me all the day like a flood,

they assail me all together.

Friend and neighbor you have taken away:

my one companion is darkness.

(Psalm 88)