HOLY SATURDAY

The Church believes and confesses that the Lord Jesus was crucified and died on the Cross. He rested with the sleep of Holy Saturday. Thus, the commandment was fulfilled, which, after the Exodus from Egypt, God gave Moses (Ex. 20:8).

According to the Gospel, Joseph of Arimathea ‘placed Jesus in his new tomb’ Mt. 27:60). After all, according to Christ, He had no place for burial, ‘had no place to lay his head’ (Matt. 8:20).

“We proclaim your death, O Lord, and confess your resurrection,” is said in ancient liturgies. The faith of the Church says that the Lord’s rest in death was not long.

According to the testimony of the Epistle of the Apostle Peter, and the texts of the Ancient Creeds, the Lord’s rest on Great Saturday was not self-annihilation, but the time of His, economic, active indefatigability. ‘Time to act for the Lord’ - as the Liturgy says.

“Christ, in order to bring us to God, suffered once for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, having been put to death according to the flesh, but made alive by the spirit, by which he came down and preached to the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:18-19) – saint Peter says.

“I believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, who descended into Hell,” proclaims the Apostolic Creed.

That is how, having descended into hell in spirit and destroying the underworld, Jesus broke the Sabbath low.