From Saint Ephrem the Syrian (+ 373 A.D.), doctor of the Church and the greatest poet of the patristic age. His feast day is 9 June.
The womb and Sheol shouted with joy and cried out about Your resurrection. The womb that was sealed, conceived You; Sheol that was secured, brought you forth. Against nature the womb conceived and Sheol yielded. Sealed was the grave which they entrusted with keeping the dead man. Virginal was the womb that no man knew. The virginal womb and the sealed grave like trumpets for a deaf people, shouted in its ear.
Hymns on the Nativity 10, 7-8; Corpus scriptorum Christianorum orientalium v. 187, 59.
Found in John Saward's The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty: Art, Sanctity & The Truth of Catholicism:
On this silent Saturday, this terrible Shabbat, while the Jews' Messiah sleeps the sleep of death, who burns the lights of hope? Is there no loyal remnant? There is, and its name is Mary. In the fortitude of faith, she keeps the Sabbath candles alight for her Son. That is why Saturday, the sacred day of her physical brethren, is Our Lady's weekly festival. On the first Holy Saturday, in the person of Mary of Nazareth, Israel, now an unblemished Bride, faces her hardest trial and, through the fortitude of the Holy Spirit, is triumphant.
