I lived in Boston from 2017 to 2020 while working on my PhD at Boston University. One of the many perks of being a student in Boston was that I received free access to a number of museums in the Boston area. My favorite museum was the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), and I would often spend entire afternoons wandering its halls and exhibits. This, for me, was typically a solitary activity. I went to the museum, oddly, for introspection. As I interacted with the creations of many people from across time and in different styles, featuring various subjects and invoking endless horizons of human experience, I found occasions to observe myself.
In 2018, the MFA opened what instantly became one of my favorite installations—a collection of pieces, old and new, of many different mediums, gathered to amplify the theme of “Seeking Stillness.” The installation progressed through an “L” shaped hall that let out into the Rothko exhibit, which unexpectedly took my breath away. But that’s a story for another time.
As I entered the Seeking Stillness installation, I noticed a structural alcove—a small room—off to the right side. The space was contained by plain, white walls, but somehow invoked a feeling of reverence like you might feel when walking into a quiet prayer chapel. There was only room for a few people to enter at a time. The room contained one bench, directly facing a feature wall where one large painting hung in solitude: Rosso Fiorentino’s “Dead Christ with Angels” (c. 1526). The painting catches your attention with bright contrasts of red and green and blue and orange in the clothing of the figures who stand on either side of the central and imposing figure of Christ. And he is imposing. Your first thought looking at the picture is that Jesus appears too big for the frame. His naked body glows as it defies the dark abyss behind him. He is in the tomb. And the figures on either side of him, as the title of the painting suggests, are angels.
I sat for a while, trying to discern the strange array of feelings this painting had conjured in me. I began to notice details of the painting, like the smoke rising from extinguished candles, and the very slight hint of composure on Christ’s face—almost a smile. And perhaps most provocatively, a hand reanimating into a position of resolve. I have sometimes called it the “word of God hand” in paintings that depict divine figures with the formation of a pointing finger, wrist elevated, back of hand level with the heavens.
I whispered to myself, “He’s alive.”
Well, not yet. He’s the dead Christ, on the cusp of Easter.
A placard on the wall near the painting helped me piece the image together. Rosso Fiorentino sought to capture the moment of the stone being rolled away. And you can imagine the tomb, like a vacuous, depleted lung, inhaling with one large gasp as the stone is rolled away. The rush of air entering the tomb blows out the candles, and in this moment, the death of Christ is filled with potential. This painting imagines a dead Christ on the verge of awakening, reanimating, nearly stepping out of the frame itself.
“Come out!” I whispered without thinking. In hindsight, I realize I was rehearsing another resurrection story in my head. But Jesus remained frozen in this state, almost alive, almost resurrected. And that is precisely where the painting exegeted me, body and soul: I need resurrection now. I am plagued by a sense of urgency.
This is where we find ourselves on Holy Saturday. We wait. We feel the looming abyss of the grave around us. We see God in the tomb, and for a time, we worry that perhaps this great predicament of humanity is a formidable foe for God as well. And so we do what humans do best—and I mean that, this is truly us at our best—we sit with one another in the loss. We don’t know where to go from here, but we know we have each other. And so we sit with the loss and wait, and wonder what will come of it all.
Tomorrow is Easter, and as I contemplate this liminal space of Holy Saturday, it occurs to me that Holy Saturday marks our whole lives. Easter, of course, sets the terms for our hope. But in this life, we tread on daily in the “yet but not yet.”
Here is the boldness of our faith on this Holy Saturday: that even as death closes in on us, we are on the cusp of Easter. Christ is soon to be reanimated, exiting the grave, permeating the frame of our mortal lives, redeeming all things.
The stone will soon be rolled away, the light will pierce through, and the One who overcomes death will welcome us from the darkness of death into life abundant. Our faith manifests in our waiting.
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