On the second day… Jesus didn't rise from the dead. He lay in the dark and cold of his borrowed tomb. In a Ship of Fools meditation for Easter, Simon Jenkins chews over the significance of this neglected, middle day in the story of Easter, with the help of an icon of the Eastern Church.

On Good Friday and Easter Saturday, we reach the most extreme points in the life of Jesus, when he is taken down dead from the cross and laid in the tomb.

In the Eastern Church, Holy Saturday – the day when Christ rested in the tomb – is an important day, marked by special prayers and hymns. But it's a day which the Western Church tends to leave out. It's as if we don't know what to do with Easter Saturday. Perhaps it's because we are so eager to think about the empty tomb that we forget the time when it was not empty, when for two nights it was truly the tomb of Jesus.

By doing this, we miss something vitally important. In the Apostles' Creed, these events of death and burial form a sort of hinge, and it's on this hinge that the whole story of salvation hangs…

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended to the dead.

It's at this point – death, burial and descent – that we reach absolute zero, the lowest point of all, in the life of Jesus. The beautiful icon seen on the left, from the Orthodox Church, invites us to stop and think about Jesus dead and buried.

Picture: Older the most English cathedrals, this image, known as 'the Man of Sorrows', was created in Constantinople in the 12th century. The notches and scuffs at its base show that it was once mounted on a pole and carried in processions on Holy Friday and Saturday.