Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Tom Williams and what will he discuss?
OK, we're going to be joined by Dr. Tom Williams. He's a colleague of mine from when I ran Breitbart as executive chairman. Dr. Williams is from is from Rome, lives in Rome, and he's going to talk about the importance of Holy Saturday. and Easter Sunday, the entire Easter weekend, in the Catholic community, in the Catholic faith tradition.
One of the smartest guys I know, Dr. Tom Williams, joins us next in the world.
Chapter 2: What is the significance of Holy Saturday in the Catholic faith?
Dr. Williams, before I get into it, you've written this book, and it's really, I want to spend a better part of the hour going through the argument in the book, because I think it is of this weekend, the holiest weekend in the Christian calendar for people to contemplate exactly where we are as a faith in the persecution directed towards the faith.
Walk us through from a Catholic perspective the importance of Holy Saturday. You know, people know Good Friday and the crucifixion of Christ, Holy Thursday with the Last Supper and the arrest, Gethsemane. And then you've got but Holy Saturday kind of a lot of times gets lost in the mix and obviously with the with Easter.
Chapter 3: Why is Christ's descent into hell important for understanding Easter?
But what's the importance of Holy Saturday and particularly this belief of Christ's descent into hell?
There are two things. Thank you, Steve. And it's good to be with you on this very, very holy day. There are two traditions that go way back.
Chapter 4: How does modern Christianity overlook the teachings of Holy Saturday?
One that goes back furthest is the one you just mentioned, the idea of Christ's descent into hell. It's a hell that's a little different than the way we understand hell today in the sense that he went to lead out the souls of the just who had died before his coming.
It's a basic Christian belief that up till Christ redeemed the world, up to the time of his suffering on the cross, all those good and holy prophets, men and women of God who had lived since the time of Adam, since the fall of Adam and Eve, They had not been able to go to heaven.
Chapter 5: What historical context is necessary to understand Christian persecution?
Heaven had not been opened to them. A savior was needed. And the traditional understanding of that was that they were in hell, hell not as in condemned for all time, the way we think of hell as having been judged and found unworthy. But hell, more like our understanding of limbo, the old traditional sense of kind of in a waiting place or in a place of the dead, a Gehenna-like place.
And that Jesus goes, and there's a beautiful homily from the second century, one of the earliest Christian texts we possess outside of biblical texts, where the author describes Jesus talking to Adam,
Chapter 6: How do contemporary events reflect the challenges faced by Christians?
and his conversation with him, because he is the new Adam, and inviting him to stand up and to take his rightful place. And then all these crowds, the multitude of the just who lived in times before Christ, rejoicing in the salvation that has finally come to them, that they are now able to enter heaven.
How is this? It's something that's been been lost in modernity. It's not really discussed of Holy Saturday and Christ going into, you know, going to hell to to bring, I guess, the pagans or the people that were there that hadn't had the the living word of Christ on Earth when they existed.
Chapter 7: What are the implications of the growing anti-Christian sentiment?
Right. The great philosophers and all that. Why is it like so many other teachings? And one of the powerful things about your book is to go back and really. emphasized the early church, what happened in the early church, the persecutions of the early church, to make sure we understand it, particularly that it was directed at the Christian faith.
Chapter 8: How can Christians prepare for potential future persecution?
Why with modernity have people kind of lost, has Holy Saturday in the general Christian faith overall kind of lost its place?
Well, unfortunately, Steve, I think you know that answer better than I do. It's this kind of sunny, feel-good form of Christianity and Catholicism that is so prevalent in our day. We only want to talk about the nice, fuzzy-feeling kind of stories and the parables and the sheep and the things that make us feel good. It's not only Jesus' descent into hell that we don't talk about on Holy Saturday.
We don't talk about hell itself. We don't talk about the possibility of condemnation. We don't talk about judgment. We don't talk about the eternal truths. And this is we're not doing justice to the fullness of the Christian message when we pass over these essential, central teachings of the Christian and the Catholic faith. So I think that's kind of the short answer to this.
It's also something very tough for people to understand. Again, we don't talk about hell at all. Look, in the Apostles' Creed, what do we say? We say, he descended into hell, right? I mean, it's actually there, but nobody goes and explains, bothers to look, what does that even mean, right? This idea that there was an entire human race of those who have been deemed just
whether they were, as you say, the pagan philosophers and those who were just Gentiles, if you will, but also all the Jewish patriarchs and prophets, all the Jewish holy people who had not been able to enter heaven until Christ opened it for them. This is something absolutely remarkable and wonderful. And it is mysterious. It's something that is very hard to understand.
But it's something that is at the core of what we believe as Christians. And it's so good that you bring this back by having us talk about this on Holy Saturday. A second thing, I'll say this just as kind of a segue so we can go back to the other as well. Another part of the Christian tradition is a great devotion to Mary on Holy Saturday.
There's been for many centuries a devotion of special consolation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who knows a sorrow and an abandonment. on Holy Saturday that the rest of humanity does not experience. And the reason that Saturday has always been considered Mary's day, the day after her passion, in a way, was on Saturday and Christ's passion was on Friday.
That's why we celebrate the Immaculate Heart of Mary always on a Saturday, the day after we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It's her sharing in the passion. but also in a particular way of having Jesus, her son, taken from her. This day of mourning, this day of loss, when she experiences this desolation of soul because her beloved son, Jesus, has been taken from her.
She watched him suffer and die, and now he's laid in a tomb. And so there is also that beautiful tradition of consolation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, particularly on that Saturday.
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