Catholic Fire

On Holy Saturday, the Church waits at the Lord's tomb in prayer, meditating on His Passion and Death and on His descent into Hell, awaiting His Resurrection. "Here we are, Your Church the Body from Your Body and from Your Blood. We are here, we are keeping watch. We are by Your sepulcher." ~ Pope John Paul II "Holy Saturday is the day of the 'death of God,' the day which expresses the unparalleled experience of our age, anticipating the fact that God is simply absent, that the grave hides him, that he no longer awakes, no longer speaks, so that one no longer needs to gainsay him but can simply overlook him…Christ strode through the gate of our final loneliness; in his Passion he went down into the abyss of our abandonment. Where no voice can reach us any longer, there is he. Hell is thereby overcome, or, to be more accurate, death, which was previously hell, is hell no longer. Neither is the same any longer because there is life in the midst of deat...

March 25, 2013. (Romereports.com) In honor of the Year of Faith, the Shroud of Turin will be displayed once again inside the Dome of Turin on Holy Saturday, March 30. The last time it was put on display for the public was more than three years ago.   However, the visit is only open to a group of 300 made up of youths and people who are sick or disabled. It will also be broadcast live. When Benedict XVI visited the Shroud of Turin in 2010, he called it an “icon of Holy Saturday,” which is why the Archbishop of Turin decided to put it on display for the Year of Faith.

Via CWN : Before his resignation took effect on February 28, Pope Benedict XVI authorized a television broadcast that will display the Shroud of Turin. On Holy Saturday, March 31, Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia will lead a liturgical ceremony that will include a public display of the Shroud. The ceremony will be telecast and made available worldwide. The last broadcast images of the Shroud were carried by the Italian RAI network in 1973. The last public display of the Shroud was in May 2010. Pope Benedict was among the 2 million people who came to venerate the Shroud during that exposition.

On Holy Saturday the Church waits at the Lord's tomb, meditating on his suffering and death. The altar is left bare, and the sacrifice of the Mass is not celebrated. Only after the solemn vigil during the night, held in anticipation of the resurrection, does the Easter celebration begin, with a spirit of joy that overflows into the following period of fifty days.