All-powerful and ever-living God,
your only Son went down among the dead
and rose again in glory.
In your goodness
raise up your faithful people,
buried with him in baptism,
to be one with him
in the eternal life of heaven,
where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
That prayer, from today's Liturgy of the Hours, sums up this day of the Triduum, which we must admit is probably one of the most mysterious days of our faith. This is the day that we remember that line in the Apostle's Creed, "he descended into hell."
The second reading for today's Office of Readings speaks of the weirdness of this day: "Something strange is happening–there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness." It's weird because we all know, at this point in history, what is to come. But yet the world and especially the Liturgy are quiet, and will remain so until the wondrous cacophony of the Easter Gloria at tonight's Vigil.
The best I think we can all do is to enter into the silence–and the weirdness–and see what Word is spoken to us in all of that. Let us truly silence ourselves in order to prepare to celebrate with all the more raucousness the Resurrection of our Lord.