Feast + Fast: Easter Saturday

For each day of Holy Week, Christina Rees offers a reflection for our hearts and minds, and a recipe for a simple meal to nourish our bodies. All these recipes and many more can be found in her book Feast + Fast: Food for Lent and Easter.

Saturday 11^th April – Holy Saturday

The worst had happened. Jesus had been killed, without having established the longed-for kingdom he had talked so much about and his followers had dispersed in fear, grief and despair. After the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple, had been granted permission by Pilate to take away Jesus’ body. Nicodemus, another secret follower, had helped Joseph to prepare the body for burial and they had laid it, wrapped in linen and spices, in a tomb carved into the rock on the side of a disused quarry, now covered in shrubs and vines. For Jesus’ family and friends, it was the end of a day of horror and unspeakable grief, and for most of the disciples, unbearable shame. It was the end of all the hopes and dreams and visions of a new world, a new way of living that Jesus had made seem so possible, so real. And now, nothing.

We can picture Jesus’ mother Mary, sobbing through the night; Mary Magdalen, inconsolable; John, numb, confused and Peter, broken, wretched, full of self-loathing. But if we leave the friends, frozen in their hopelessness, and go back to the silent tomb obscured in the darkness of the garden, what was happening? Between Jesus’ death and his being raised to new life, what was going on?

There is a long tradition about what happened to Jesus’ soul after his crucifixion and before the resurrection, based on various verses in the Bible and in the belief that, after death, a soul has to be somewhere, because it doesn’t just cease to exist: the essence of who we are as individual beings is eternal.

Many early theologians believed that Jesus’ soul descended into Hell to preach to the souls in torment and to rescue those who were prepared to repent and follow him back up to Heaven. This idea became known as the Harrowing of Hell and was based on a handful of verses in the Bible and in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, among other writings. This idea that Jesus descended into Hell between his death and resurrection also features in numerous paintings and in medieval mystery plays. It appears, of course, in the Apostles’ Creed:

‘I believe…in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord,

Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

Born of the Virgin Mary,

Suffered under Pontius Pilate,

Was crucified, died and was buried;

He descended into hell.’

While the creed doesn’t go into any detail about what Jesus’ descent into hell actually means, the fact that it is included in the creed forces us, at least, to think about it.

My friend Sonia Falaschi-Ray wrote a vivid description of the Harrowing of Hell in her book, Missing – Three Days in Jerusalem, casting Satan as a blonde chisel-jawed Lucifer, with Jesus encountering Herod, Judas and Adam and Eve among other well-known figures.

Whatever our views of what was happening on Holy Saturday, spiritually it stands as a time apart, a day of limbo, a pause for us to recalibrate between the bleak contemplations of Good Friday and the joyful anticipation of Easter Sunday. It also gives us time to prepare for the celebrations of Easter!

Today I will be putting together my Easter tree, something I do every year, finding a bare twig with lots of little branches for hanging my collection of painted wooden eggs. I am also hoping to be able to make my Russian grandmother’s traditional Easter dessert today, as it has to be made at least a day ahead, but at the time of writing I’m not certain whether I’ll be able to get all the ingredients. If you are able to buy things like cream cheese and cottage cheese and maybe have some blanched almonds, raisins, and candied lemon or orange peel in your cupboard, I commend this delicious and symbolic Easter pudding.

RECIPE

Olga Popoff’s Pascha

This traditional Russian Easter dessert has been passed down through generations of my father’s family. When my grandmother, Olga Popoff Muller died, my mother carried on making her mother-in-law’s pascha at Easter. When I married and moved to England, I brought the recipe with me and have made it nearly every year. I love knowing that other members of my extended family also still make Grandmama’s pascha.

Serves 8

1 egg

½ cup sugar

*2lbs/900g cottage cheese

*1 14oz/400g packet cream cheese

*½ pint/275ml sour cream

(* if you prefer a creamier and denser texture, use less cottage cheese and more cream cheese and sour cream)

½ cup chopped blanched almonds

½ cup raisins and candied lemon and orange peel

¼ teaspoon almond essence

¼ teaspoon citron essence

¼ teaspoon vanilla essence

¼ teaspoon lemon essence

To decorate

blanched almonds

raisins

Mix the ingredients in the order given until creamy. Put the mixture into a large sieve lined with a clean piece of muslin cloth. Tie the ends of the cloth over the top and place a plate on top. On top of the plate place a heavy object, like a half a brick, an iron doorstop or a glass paperweight. Keep in the refrigerator overnight.

To serve, turn upside down onto a large plate and decorate with some extra raisins and blanched almonds. On one side spell out in raisins ‘X B’, which stands for Christ is Risen. On the other side make a Russian Orthodox cross in raisins. For more decoration, make lines of raisins and almonds going from the top to the bottom of the pascha. On the very top place a freshly-cut red rose.