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
Deanna Thompson is Martin E. Marty Regents Chair in Religion and the Academy at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, where she also serves as...
Van Gessel is Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Brigham Young University, where he also served as dean of the College of Humanities. He...
Stephanie Paulsell is Susan Shallcross Swarz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School and Faculty Dean of Eliot House at...
