Holy Saturdays

Blessed Art Thou of Little Faith

My mom is ninety-four years old and until recently lived by herself in Hurricane, a small town in southern Utah where I grew up. Her health has deteriorated of late. She has always been physically active, walking a mile every morning, mowing her own lawn up until two years ago. My dad passed away twenty-two years ago, and she misses him. She has decided it is her time to join him in the eternities and has become quite matter-of-fact about it. We planned to drive down to visit her for Thanksgiving week, and I received a phone call from her the week before. Our conversation went like this:

Her: When are you coming home for Thanksgiving?

Me: Probably Monday.

Her: Oh, good. I'm going to die next week and I wanted someone to be here.

Me: Okay, well, that's nice, Mom. We'll just plan on you dying for Thanksgiving, then.

Her: Yes. Please pray for that. Love you. See you Monday.

Me: Love you too, Mom. See you Monday.

During our Thanksgiving visit, my mom’s death was never far from her mind. She got out her funeral program and went over it with me and some of her grandkids. She was convinced that Heavenly Father had told her that she would die that week, and the possibility was satisfying to her. She was terribly disappointed when the week ended and she was still alive.

She then reset her sights and asked if she could join us over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays (with the caveat, of course, that she might be dead by then). We enjoyed a pleasant few weeks together. One early morning during her visit, we heard a loud thud in her room. We rushed in to find that she had fallen and severely injured her arm and head. I spent the morning in the emergency room with her. It became clear that week that her injuries required twenty-four-hour care with medical skills beyond those that I or my wife possessed. Despite her long-held insistence that she wanted to die in her own home, we found a care center in southern Utah and made the agonizing decision to move her into her new home. We set up her room with all of her favorite things, including her bed and her chair and, at her insistence, one of her favorite pictures of the Savior.

As my wife and I bid her goodbye to return home to Bountiful, I could not shake overwhelming feelings of sadness and guilt. Over the coming weeks I was plagued with bouts of anger and remorse, and was confronted by deep theological questions about the purpose of life and my own relationship with the divine. I felt numb to the world and entertained questions that mostly led to feelings of despair.

I reflected on the last twenty years of my life and the loss of so many members of my family who left us far too young. My mother-in-law passed away from cancer at age 59, robbed of the chance to meet most of her grandkids and to bless their lives with her beautiful smile. Our daughter Emma was born on the day of her grandmother’s funeral. My dad passed away less than six months later from the effects of Alzheimer’s. My oldest brother Stephen died two years later at age 62 in a horse-riding accident, leaving a wife and six kids behind. My close friend and sister died two years after that, at age 60, while I was holding her hand. This brother and sister are technically my half-brother and sister. Their mother, my dad’s first wife, died at age 40 on the operating room table at the Mayo Clinic, leaving three teenage children behind. My dad then married my mom, who was 15 years younger than he, and together they had me and one older brother. Two years before I was born, my other half-brother was drafted into the Vietnam war after being married for only six months. He was killed two months after arriving in Vietnam, at the age of twenty-one. To complete the string of family deaths, my father-in-law passed away unexpectedly in 2012 at age 69.

In the weeks after placing my ninety-four-year-old mother in the care center in Hurricane, I was filled with questions as I tried to make sense of so much death at such relatively young ages juxtaposed against my mom’s own desire to join my dad in the eternities. She prays for this every day, and yet she lingers on in an increasingly painful body, riddled with arthritis. Where is God in all of this, I wondered. How could he take so many people that I love at such young ages while ignoring my mom’s pleadings to slip peacefully beyond the veil? It felt too much to absorb.

I believe in the miracles of the garden and the cross and the empty tomb. In fact, Jesus Christ’s supernal acts on those holy days form the core of my faith, the rock on which my trust in God and his son are built. The miracles of Christ’s infinite love are what keep me coming back week after week, when sometimes logic and good sense suggest otherwise. Despite my love for the events of those three holy days, I am even more intrigued by what sometimes feels like a perpetual challenge for me—that of making the day between the agony of the cross and the thrill of the empty tomb a holy day of its own.

Christian theologians sometimes refer to the Saturday that is sandwiched between the crucifixion and the resurrection as Holy Saturday, not because anything holy in particular happened on that day (the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are in fact relatively silent on anything of import occurring then). No, Christian theologians sometimes refer to that most difficult of Saturdays as Holy Saturday precisely because it tested the devotion of Christ’s small group of followers in significant ways.

Jesus Christ’s followers had come to believe that he, the son of a lowly carpenter, was in fact the promised messiah, the Son of God. And yet they witnessed their promised messiah endure unimaginable cruelty at the hands of Roman overseers and at the hands of their own religious leaders, an unsettling dilemma all its own. They witnessed Jesus Christ become “wounded in the house of his friends” (Zechariah 13:6; D&C 45:52), whipped, forced to carry a cross—the instrument of his own death—they witnessed his hands and feet nailed to that cross, his head crowned with plaited thorns, offered vinegar for water, left alone by his father, and ultimately his side pierced with a Roman sword.

Thus, on the day following Christ’s state and religiously sanctioned execution, on Holy Saturday, there was no promised deliverance, no triumph over death, no righting of wrongs, only sorrow and despair. The promised messiah was dead and his enemies had won.

Why had his followers believed in the first place? The path of discipleship led them through public scorn and down a painful trail to Golgotha and death. There was no political victory over the Roman empire nor was there spiritual vindication over the Scribes, Pharisees, and the Sanhedrin who had branded them heretics, unorthodox, people who had strayed from the covenant path, people who did not belong and were not welcome at the Synagogue because they followed Jesus Christ.

On Holy Saturday, the promised messiah was dead, and his followers were left undelivered and alone—left to ponder their choices, their fate, and perhaps even the purpose of life and their relationship to God. I can only imagine that deep existential questions might have entered their minds and perhaps left some of them in despair. Certainly, in the Americas, the Book of Mormon tells us that this was the case: an impenetrable darkness settled over the people, “And it came to pass that it did last for the space of three days that there was no light seen; and there was great mourning and howling and weeping among all the people continually; yea, great were the groanings of the people, because of the darkness and the great destruction which had come upon them” (3 Nephi 8:23).

In the words of two scholars of Christianity, “in the Holy Saturday moments of our lives, we find ourselves wrestling ‘with divine silence and absence.’” On Holy Saturdays, we might find ourselves asking, “if the Son himself has been delivered up to destruction, what hope is there for the rest of us?” Holy Saturdays rob us of our loved ones far too soon and let other loved ones linger in mortal pain far too long.

As Elder Renlund so eloquently put it, “suffering and brutal unfairness can seem incompatible with the reality of a kind, loving Heavenly Father. Yet He is real, He is kind, and He loves each of His children perfectly. This dichotomy is as old as mankind and cannot be explained in a simple sound bite or on a bumper sticker.”

Holy Saturdays, in Elder Renlund’s version of things, are filled with infuriating unfairness. He clarified, “Some unfairness cannot be explained; inexplicable unfairness is infuriating. Unfairness comes from living with bodies that are imperfect, injured, or diseased. Mortal life is inherently unfair. Some people are born in affluence; others are not. Some have loving parents; others do not. Some live many years; others, few. And on and on and on.”

For those who are struggling through Holy Saturdays all their own, sound bite phrases or bumper sticker cliches, no matter how well intentioned, fail to capture the complexities of their experiences. A listening ear and understanding heart, in contrast, can offer grace and healing in times of need. “As we develop faith in Jesus Christ, we should also strive to become like Him,” Elder Renlund counsels. “We then approach others with compassion and try to alleviate unfairness where we find it; we can try to make things right within our sphere of influence.”

In February, still weighed down by Holy Saturday feelings of my own, I prepared to fly to California to deliver a lecture at the Huntington Library, a beautiful research library in Southern California that has a large collection of sources in Mormon and Latter-day Saint studies. In conjunction with BYU, Utah State University, and Claremont Graduate University, the Huntington initiated a new lecture series in Mormon studies, and they invited me to deliver the inaugural lecture. Scholars from BYU, USU, and Claremont were traveling to be there for the occasion. As I hugged my wife goodbye, I was filled with gloom; I could not shake the Holy Saturday cloud of silence and absence that seemed to hover over my head. The silence of the grave rang loudly in my ears. Nothing that we do in this life matters, I thought. We live and then we die and the world continues on without us. What is the purpose of it all, anyway?

On the plane ride to California, I reread a chapter about Holy Saturdays in Life to the Whole Being, a book by BYU English professor Matthew Wickman. When I arrived in California and checked into my hotel, I found a card that my wife had tucked into my suitcase, unbeknownst to me. “I believe in you,” the card declared. “You will do great Wednesday night; what you are doing matters,” she wrote. The cloud began to lift.

A friend shared a BYU devotional talk by Elder Kevin R. Duncan titled “Jesus Christ is the Answer.” Elder Duncan said, “Christ’s grace isn’t about us being perfect. It’s about trusting in and relying on Him when you’re at your lowest and letting His strength carry you through.” I can do that, I thought. I can rely on Christ’s grace. He has never let me down before.

I had an opportunity to wander the gardens of the Huntington a couple of hours before the reception, dinner, and lecture. The library is surrounded by acres of immaculately cultivated gardens that are stunningly beautiful and inspiring. I connect with God most directly through nature. I imagine our heavenly parents as creators of the intricate beauty that surrounds us, and I am filled with a sense of awe. As I made my way through the various phases of the gardens, I was filled with peace.

I wandered alone into one corner of the gardens, drawn to a particular tree that captivated me. It had thick, deep roots that projected from the ground and were taller than I was. It was majestic, and also felt wise to me. I felt a certain spiritual presence that seemed to draw me closer. I sensed that God was aware of this tree, that it was a living, breathing entity that beautified the world. It turned harmful carbon dioxide into oxygen and stored carbon in its trunk. I sensed that this tree mattered, that it had a spirit, and that our heavenly parents were aware of this tree’s existence and loved it.

From the plaque placed under its canopy, I learned that it was an Ombu tree, native to the deserts of Argentina. It stores water in its massive roots to protect it against the frequent droughts that plague those deserts. This particular tree under which I stood was planted at the Huntington in 1914, making it over one hundred and ten years old. I felt the strength of its wisdom and was prompted to follow its example, to draw on the living water of Jesus Christ that I have stored in my own roots of faith.

The words of a familiar verse came to mind: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” (Matthew 6:28-30).

I certainly felt of little faith at that moment. Yet my heavenly parents were aware of me, even in their silence and absence. I felt their love for that Ombu tree and in turn I felt their love for me.

That majestic tree was making a difference in the world, and I could make a difference too. I can be a stone catcher rather than a stone thrower. I can greet others with curiosity rather than judgment. I can “build bridges of understanding rather than creating walls of segregation.” I can love God and my neighbors as myself (Matthew 22:38-39). I can love my enemies and pray for those who despitefully use me (Matthew 5:44). I can feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, take in the stranger, clothe the naked, minister to the sick and those in prison. For as Jesus Christ declared, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:37-40).

God did not answer my most perplexing questions about why my mom was lingering on in a life that she prays might end while so many other members of my family died young and left loved ones behind to mourn. But he did remind me that he loved me. My point of view quickly transitioned from that of Holy Saturday to the miracle of the empty tomb.

When Jesus appeared in the Americas following his ascension to the Father, he said to those who gathered following their own Holy Saturdays of despair, “Have ye any that are sick among you . . . or that are afflicted in any manner? Bring them hither and I will heal them” (3 Nephi 17:7).

Since that time in the garden at the Huntington, I continue to be healed by the grace of Jesus Christ. I have been reminded of the repeated grace that he has bestowed upon me even in the midst of my Holy Saturdays. At the birth of my daughter Emma, the day of her grandmother’s funeral, my wife and I independently felt my mother-in-law’s presence with us, offering comfort in our grief. Two weeks before my brother died in the riding accident, he phoned me in Virginia after learning that I had been hired by the University of Utah. He told me that he was excited to have us closer so that he could see us more often. He said that I was doing good things with that history degree that he had earlier tried to persuade me not to get. He then told me that he was proud of me. It was the last time I talked to my brother, and that phone call was a gift of grace that I will never forget.

Six days before my Catholic father-in-law passed away unexpectedly, he called me. He wanted me to know that he was happy with the way that Beth and I were raising his grandkids, that he was happy to have me as a son-in-law, and that he was proud of me and Beth. It was the last time I talked to him, and that phone call likewise was an unforgettable gift of grace.

My sister had a stroke on a Sunday and fell into a coma. We traveled to southern Utah on the following Thursday. She passed away a few short hours later, as I held her hand. It was one of the holiest experiences of my life and another gift of grace that I will never forget. And each time I talk to my mom at the care center where she now resides, she tells me how grateful she is to be there to have people to care for her in ways that she could no longer manage for herself. It is another manifestation of Christ’s grace that feels too good to be true.

“For my grace is sufficient for you,” Jesus Christ repeatedly reminds us (D&C 17:8; D&C 18:31; Ether 12:26-27; 2 Corinthians 12:9). Even when we might fear that our resurrection morn and the miracle of the empty tomb might never come, his grace is sufficient for us.

Remember Thomas, one of Christ’s twelve apostles. He was not present when the resurrected Lord visited his other disciples. They nonetheless told Thomas, “We have seen the Lord,” but Thomas, a rock-hard empiricist with whom I identify far too well, said, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:24-25).

Eight days later, as the disciples met in a closed room, Jesus again appeared to them. “Peace be with you!” he declared. This time, Thomas was present. Jesus instructed, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.” Thomas responded, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:26-29).

I have not seen Jesus Christ, but I believe. With President Nelson, “I plead [that all of us will] come unto Him so that He can heal [us]! I believe in the miracles of the garden and the cross and the empty tomb. I believe in the struggles of Holy Saturdays, too. “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

W. Paul Reeve is the chair of the History Department and Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah where he teaches courses on Utah history, Mormon history, and the history of the U.S. West. His book, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, (Oxford, 2015) received three best book awards.

Art by Vicente Manansala.