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Weep?
Prepare?
Rejoice?
Holy Saturday tends to present itself as a day of mystery.
Sandwiched between the dark and somber of Good Friday and the triumphant and jubilous of Easter Sunday, Holy Saturday tends to either be forgotten or flooded with joyous activity.
An uncertain bridge.
A mystification.
A perplexity.
A gap.
Holy Saturday was a day that Jesus was indeed dead.
He had already suffered.
His agony was gone.
He now lay dead.
In a guarded tomb.
In some ways, Holy Saturdays" seems to become the epitome of many of our lives. We face them. We walk through them.
Times when there doesn’t seem to be a
foreseeable solution to our pain;
times when we’re waiting
for the agony to be over;
times when we’re completely
struggling to see the point of the pain;
Times when we wonder if the
suffering will ever truly be over.
Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is a beautiful example in whom to turn during these times. Mary trusted God so fully and completely that--although she did not fully understand why her son had to die--she had faith in God that everything was in His hands. That trust didn't mean that she felt any less pain and agony, but that implicit faith? It gave her incredible strength.
...strength to look into Jesus' eyes on the
way to Calvary and in turn, give her Son
the strength He needed to finish what He had to do.
...strength to stand at the foot of her
Son's Cross and watch Him die.
...strength to accept His dead body into
her weary, heartbroken arms.
And above all, it gave her the strength to
welcome something she did not fully understand. Today and tonight, may we find faith like Mary.
A grieving mother who knew that the story simply
could not end with the events of Good Friday.
Because, Holy Saturday?
It did not last forever.
For, after the tomb, came the resurrection.
On this, Holy Saturday, let us not be so quick to fast forward to the glory of the Easter celebration- a joyful coming, in its own time. But instead, may we find a moment to sit in the company of Mary, the Mother of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and pray to her to accompany us through the Holy Saturdays of our lives.
"Holy Saturday...seems to be fitting for the nature of our human life: we are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing in the full light, but walking toward it full of trust." Pope Benedict XVI
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