Reflection for Holy Saturday

Jesus Christ is a divine person (i.e., the second Person of the Blessed Trinity) with a divine and human nature.  Since he is fully human, he has a soul and body.  So, where did Jesus' human soul go when it was separated from his body in death?  The Catechism of the Catholic Church answers:

"The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was 'raised from the dead' presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection.  This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ's descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead.  But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there (no. 632)."

"Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, 'hell' - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God.  Such is the case for all the dead, whether the evil or righteous, while they await the redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into 'Abraham's bosom': It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abrahams bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.  Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him (no. 633)."

"Christ went down into the depths of death so that 'the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.'  Jesus, 'the Author of Life,' by dying destroyed 'him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and delivered all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.'  Henceforth, the risen Christ holds 'the keys of Death and Hades,' so that 'at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth' (no. 635)."

In closing, Pope Benedict XVI offers a pastoral explanation of Holy Saturday:

"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 he is.  Hell is thereby overcome, or, to be more accurate, death, which was previously hell, is no hell no longer.  Neither is the same any longer because there is life in the midst of death, because love dwells in it (emphasis mine)."