Great and Holy Saturday is the day Christ lay in the tomb. His body rested in death while His soul descended into Hades to shatter its gates and free the captive dead.
It’s the strangest day of the Church year. We’re mourning at a funeral, but we know the ending. The tomb is sealed, but Hades is already groaning in defeat. Saturday morning we come to church wearing our darkest clothes, and we leave in white vestments holding lit candles. The day doesn’t fit into one category. That’s the point.
What Happens on Saturday Morning
Most Orthodox parishes celebrate the Vesperal Liturgy of St. Basil the Great on Saturday morning. Don’t let the name confuse you. It’s Vespers (evening prayer) combined with the Divine Liturgy, but we celebrate it in the morning because it belongs to Pascha, which begins at sunset Saturday. The early Church celebrated this as part of the all-night Paschal vigil when catechumens were baptized.
The service starts in darkness. Lenten vestments, somber tones. We hear fifteen Old Testament readings, more than any other service all year. The song of Moses after crossing the Red Sea. Jonah delivered from the belly of the whale. The three young men walking unharmed in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. Every reading points to God’s power over death.
Then the Gospel. Matthew 28, the angel at the empty tomb telling the myrrh-bearing women that Christ is risen. But we’re still standing at the tomb on Saturday. The light is breaking into the darkness before dawn.
After the Epistle reading, the priest chants Psalm 82: “Arise, O God, judge the earth, for Thou shalt take all nations to Thine inheritance.” At many parishes he tosses laurel branches, a sign of victory, of life awakening. The clergy disappear into the altar and come back wearing bright white vestments. Everything has changed in an instant.
We sing “Let all mortal flesh keep silence” as the gifts are brought to the altar. The Communion hymn proclaims, “The Lord awaked as one out of sleep, and He is risen to save us.” We’re still technically on Saturday, Christ still in the tomb, but the Resurrection is already breaking through.
At the end of the Liturgy, we process around the church carrying the Epitaphios (the cloth icon showing Christ’s body prepared for burial) while chanting the Trisagion, “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.” Everyone holds lit candles. It looks like a funeral procession, but those candles say otherwise.
The Harrowing of Hades
Here’s what the Church believes happened on Saturday while Christ’s body lay in the tomb. His soul descended into Hades, not as a prisoner, but as a conqueror. The icon of this event shows Christ standing on the shattered bronze gates of hell, pulling Adam and Eve up out of their graves by the wrists. Keys and chains and broken locks scatter in the darkness beneath His feet.
One of the hymns from the service puts words in Hades’ mouth: “I should not have accepted the Man born of Mary. He came and destroyed my power. He shattered the gates of brass. As God, He raised the souls I had held captive.”
This isn’t mythology. We believe this actually happened. Christ didn’t just die for us, He went down into death itself and destroyed it from the inside. He trampled down death by death, as we’ll sing at Pascha. Every person who died before the Resurrection, everyone who’d been waiting in that darkness, Abraham, Moses, David, John the Baptist, the righteous and the repentant, Christ brought them out.
That’s why Saturday is called the Blessed Sabbath. God rested on the seventh day of creation. Christ rested in the tomb on the Sabbath, but His rest was the completion of a new creation. Death no longer has the final word.
A Day That Doesn’t Fit
If you come to the Vesperal Liturgy expecting it to feel like Good Friday, you’ll be surprised. Yes, there’s mourning. But there’s also this strange, quiet joy threading through everything. The Old Testament readings keep shouting about deliverance. The white vestments appear halfway through. We receive Communion, something we never do at a funeral.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote about how this day holds together things that seem opposite: death and life, burial and rising, darkness and light. We’re standing in that in-between place where the old world is dying and the new one is being born.
For those of you coming from Baptist or non-denominational backgrounds, this might feel unfamiliar. You’re used to Good Friday being about the cross and Easter Sunday being about the empty tomb, with Saturday as just a gap in between. But the Church has always insisted that Saturday matters. What Christ did in Hades on Saturday is part of our salvation. He didn’t just die and rise, He invaded death’s territory and liberated the prisoners.
If you’re in Beaumont this Holy Week and you can only make it to one service before Pascha, come Saturday morning. You’ll see the whole sweep of salvation history in those readings. You’ll watch darkness turn to light right in front of you. And you’ll start to understand why we can stand at a tomb holding candles and singing about victory.
The tomb isn’t empty yet on Saturday. But it’s already defeated.
