What Happened on Holy Saturday? ~ The ancient sources on Christ's Harrowing of Hell

Michie · Apr 13, 2025

Wednesday of Holy Week is sometimes referred to as Spy Wednesday, a reference to the betrayal of Our Lord by the traitor Judas Iscariot.

Every Christian knows that on Holy Thursday, we remember the Last Supper, and that Good Friday is the day on which the Lord was crucified and died.

Holy Saturday, however, is different. For most Christians, it is a peaceful time – a day of reflection separating the drama and sorrow of the Passion from the joy of Easter Sunday. On Holy Saturday, there is seemingly not much going on. For the modern Church, it is a quiet time of watching and waiting.

But the traditional teachings of the ancient Church tell a much different story. Something tremendous on a cosmic scale happened on Easter Saturday: Christ’s descent into Hell.

Often called the Harrowing of Hell in English, or the Anastasis in Greek, we find this mysterious event recorded without elaboration in the Apostles’ Creed:

“He descended into Hell.”

It is rumored that Mel Gibson’s follow-up to The Passion of the Christ will attempt to bring this event to the big screen as part of the larger story of the resurrection of Christ. How he will do that is anyone’s guess. But you can bet it will be epic. And probably gruesome.

The harrowing of Hell is mentioned obliquely in Sacred Scripture, most specifically in First Epistle of St. Peter, where the Apostle says:

"Because Christ also died once for our sins, the just for the unjust: that he might offer us to God, being put to death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the spirit, in which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison: Which had been some time incredulous, when they waited for the patience of God in the days of Noah, when the ark was a building: wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water." [1 Peter 3:18-20]

This mysterious passage from the Gospel of Matthew is similarly used to support the Harrowing of Hell:

"And the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose, And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, came into the holy city, and appeared to many." [Matthew 27:52-53]

Continued below.