The twentieth-century Welsh poet R.S. Thomas has been called a poet of Holy Saturday. Holy Saturday falls between the day of Christ’s crucifixion and the morning of His resurrection. Commemorative of Christ’s descent to the realm of the dead, Holy Saturday, and the poetry of R.S. Thomas, also speak evocatively to times when we feel caught somewhere between devastation and hope, between periods of spiritual suffering and the experience of God’s blessing. With Easter approaching, we spoke with Richard McLauchlan—an independent scholar, professional biographer, and author of Saturday’s Silence: R.S. Thomas and Paschal Reading—about the day between crucifixion and resurrection, a day of suffering and silence that speaks to the spiritual realities so many of us feel.
Interview by Matthew Wickman, Founding Director, BYU Humanities Center.
Produced and edited by Brooke Browne and Sam Jacob
Jessica Hooten Wilson is the inaugural Visiting Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University and senior fellow at Trinity Forum. She’s the author and...
Leonard McMahon is an assistant professor of pastoral care, spirituality, and political theology at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, and also founder and...
Debra Rienstra is Professor of English at Calvin University, where she teaches early modern British Literature and creative writing. She is the author of...
