What a difference a day makes: the day after Jesus' death, his disciples were paralyzed by grief and fear. To them, as to us, Easter comes as an unfathomable surprise. (testaments).

ON SATURDAY, THE DEATH OF JESUS WAS slowly becoming a fact of history, dreadful to bear and hard to put away. Yet by the morning hours of Sunday, everything that was certain would be in doubt, and all that had been doubted would be transformed by the light of faith.

In the long hours between Thursday night and Sunday morning, those who knew Jesus or had been touched by his life were plagued by the events surrounding his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. They wrestled with the suddenness of the crisis. They ached with the part they had played or failed to play. They mourned his loss, grieved his violent end, and feared for the future. Little did they imagine that the world would be turned upside down once more by the dawn.

Just before the Resurrection, Simon of Cyrene might well have been too restless to sleep. Since his encounter in Jerusalem with the man to be crucified, he could not get the scene out of his mind. Simon may have been on his way to do business, or to celebrate the Passover, or both, when he ran into the procession heading out toward Golgotha. Surely, whatever his plans were, he had had no thought of getting his hands messy with such a disagreeable incident.

He may not have heard of Jesus before this chance meeting. A bleeding, beaten, condemned criminal was being led by a Roman contingent out to be crucified, while the crowds howled and mocked, and some women cried and beat their breasts. This was not an association one wished to make. Yet Simon found himself being compelled by the soldiers to take part in this ugly affair, forced to drag a wooden beam for the prisoner who seemed ready to expire on the road.

There would have been blood on the wood, now staining Simon's clothes. There would have been the stigma of being seen with the convict, too, and that would have been dreadful to bear. The insults of the crowd hurled at the half-dead man sounded political: "King of the Jews! Enemy of Caesar? But they also had a blasphemous sound: "Son of God! Messiah?

Meanwhile the poor women wept and prayed, and the soldiers tried to keep the whole procession moving. They obviously wanted to get this thing over with, and get home to their suppers and their families.

Jesus, who had spoken little since his arrest, probably exchanged no words with Simon, if he had the strength to speak at all. Yet something about the horrid drama remained a fascination for the Cyrenean.

He had not stayed till the end, hurrying off after his unwilling commission was completed. But he did not forget, even after the blood was washed from his clothes and the splinters were removed from his skin. He asked people who that man had been, the one they were intent on killing. He wanted to know precisely what kind of execution he had been so unwittingly involved in. He turned that dreadful journey over and over in his head, seeking understanding.

If he was an observant Jew, Simon would have been made unclean at Passover by contact with blood. What did the mark of this blood mean for him?

As we know from the Acts of the Apostles and also the epistles, Simon's sons Alexander and Rufus would one day become disciples of Jesus and members of the church. Perhaps Simon's participation in this event, and how he came to perceive it, planted the seed of faith that his sons harvested.

BARABBAS; TOO, HAD MUCH TO OCCUPY HIS THOUGHTS those nights. His name in Aramaic means "the son of the father," a nickname which made him an unlikely pair with Jesus. Which of these "sons of the father" do you prefer, Jerusalem? Your harmless king or this thief and murderer? No one, least of all Barabbas, would have expected the call of the crowd to be in his favor.

Jesus had once called himself the shepherd of his flock, the one whose voice the sheep would recognize. They would not follow the voice of a thief in the sheepfold, he had explained. Yet in Jerusalem that day, the crowds could not distinguish between the shepherd and a thief. They chose the thief at the expense of their protector.

What did all that mean to Barabbas? He may have had no idea who Jesus was, having spent the recent past in prison. He may have had little curiosity about how his unexpected freedom had been arrived at, consumed only with the delight of being released. But others around him, his old friends and enemies alike, would have more information about the startling deal that had been cut to his advantage. Some of them may have even pinned their hopes on Jesus when he had arrived in Jerusalem only days before.

As novelist Par Lagerkvist explores in his Pulitzer-prizewinning book, Barabbas (Vintage International), even if Barabbas didn't care about who died for him, others would, and that strange bargain would color the rest of his life. Maybe it would, in the end, make a disciple of him. Stranger folks, like Paul of Tarsus, would be dragged into the church with less at stake.

JUST BEFORE THE RESURRECTION, JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA AND his friend Nicodemus would not have had much time for reflection. They were busy with some very delicate negotiations. Both members of the Sanhedrin, neither had wanted to be known as followers of Jesus.

Nicodemus had come to Jesus under cover of darkness from time to time, to ask questions and listen to his teaching. He had spoken up for Jesus only once, when the Pharisees were cursing him. "Does our law condemn a person before it first hears him?" Nicodemus had asked. He was quickly put down. "You are not from Galilee also, are you?" his colleagues jeered at him. That was the last time Nicodemus had the nerve to raise a dissenting voice.

Both Joseph and Nicodemus awaited the Good News of the kingdom, but they didn't have the courage to seek it openly. After Jesus was put to death, however, Joseph got bolder. He went straight to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. As a distinguished member of the Jewish council, it would have seemed bizarre for him to make this request. Hadn't this very council called for his death and insisted upon its gruesome form?

Pilate was speechless. Yet he was no stranger to second thoughts about the business of the Nazarene and had willed the whole matter to go away with a mere washing of the hands. So Pilate agreed to allow this Jew to bury the man. Anything to hasten the demise of this complicated memory.

And so two leaders of the Sanhedrin collaborated on the burial of Jesus. One supplied the newly hewn tomb; the other brought myrrh and aloe, 100 pounds' worth. They gave Jesus, executed like a slave, a rich man's burial. They took great care to wrap the body in fine linens.

By dawn on Sunday morning, those linens would be all that remained of their charitable work. Folded neatly into a pile, still smelling sweetly of spices, they would be the only sign that the burial had ever taken place.

THE WOMEN WHO HAD FOLLOWED JESUS WERE ALSO FAR from taking their rest. Many of them had journeyed with Jesus from the time of his early ministry in their little fishing towns, putting their faith and their resources at his disposal. They remained with him at the foot of the cross, now heartbroken and incredulous.

Their loyalty was the only thing that was not wholly confused. Yet they knew well the treachery of those who held power and how little such people cared about the poor, the weak, and the powerless. Yes, they knew that much; after all, they were women. Since Jesus had spoken up for the likes of them, it was no wonder that the powerful had sought to crush him.

Jesus' mother was among them, and they kept courage for her sake. So was Salome, Zebedee's wife and mother of James and John; and Mary of Magdala, who had been relieved of seven demons; and Mary, mother of the other James; and Joanna, wife of King Herod's steward. There were other women, too, but no one who wrote of it later thought to discover their names. The knot of women followed Jesus wherever he went, tending to him and his band, listening on the edge of every crowd.

They were making plans to visit the tomb before morning, to anoint the body--they did not know what Joseph and Nicodemus had already done--and to maintain their loyal vigil at his grave. They had no other destination in mind: "Lord, where else would we go?"

They expected nothing in particular. They knew nothing but this: that Jesus had kept faith with them and identified with them, in a world where men were not known for associating with women or their concerns. They couldn't plan on more than tomorrow. They didn't know what they would do on Monday. All they knew was Sunday morning would find them at the mouth of the tomb.

JUST BEFORE THE RESURRECTION, WE SEE, PEOPLE HAD QUEStions, anxieties, doubts, fears, confusion, remorse, and much to ponder. Those first-century citizens went to bed on Saturday, convinced only of the death of Jesus, and rose the next morning to discover that that was the one thing they could not be sure of.

We find ourselves moving through many of the same states of mind--curious, relieved, nervous, sorrowful, fearful, faithful, or all of the above--as we come up against our own Saturdays, couched between the certainty of loss and the unfathomable surprise of Easter to come.

Holy Saturday is an invitation to hold on, not to give death too much credit or God's authority too little. Saturday is the day after horror, and the day before glory. One day, we Christians come to understand, can make all the difference in the world.

ALICE CAMILLE, author of Seven Last Words, meditations on the last sayings of Jesus from the cross, and a forthcoming book on the complete mysteries of the rosary, both available from ACTA Publications.