Saturday, March 31, 2018

This strange day



An early Christian writer once described Holy Saturday as being a day of great quietness and stillness as earth awaits the Resurrection. It is a day out of time — no sacraments to affirm the bonds between this world and the next, no warmth or colour to assuage the interior desolation, no activity to distract us or give us a false sense of security. We are simply waiting, all emotion spent, with our Holy Saturday faith, entering into a dimension of reality we cannot truly comprehend, a kind of little death that prepares us for the death we shall all one day undergo. In this state we can do nothing; God must do everything.

Holy Saturday prepares us for the newness of life that comes with the Resurrection, that we will experience at the great Easter Vigil Mass tonight and in our celebrations tomorrow.  Today’s silence and stillness, the apparent inaction of this day out of time is part of our preparation to receive the Risen Christ into our hearts; and the only way we can do that is by allowing God to do all the doing. (Adapted from iBenedictines.)

* * * * * * * * * *

O God for whom the whole creation lives 
and in whose hands are the depths of earth 
and the heights of the mountains; 
the crucified body of your beloved Son 
was laid in a new tomb 
hewn from the rock in a garden 
and rested on this holy Sabbath day. 
As your Church awaits with Christ 
the dawning of the third day
 and the beginning of your new creation, 
grant that all who are buried with him 
in the waters of baptism may rise with him to new life 
and find their perfect rest in that glorious kingdom 
that he has established by his Paschal Mystery. 
We ask this through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, 
our Passover and Peace, 
who lives and reigns with you 
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
God forever and ever.
Amen.
(Adapted from Benedictine Daily Prayer.)



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