“Heart of Hope” Painting by: Ronald Raab, CSC

Holy Saturday 2018: Carrying Within, the Dark and Light

This morning dawns with holy stillness. The church building is empty and anticipation grows for birthing followers of Jesus later tonight. All creation seems to steady its focus on what is to come. No Eucharist or sacraments before sunset. Our lives breathe into a deeper love that waits for redemption

Tonight the damn of sin breaks. Tonight we gather after sunset around fire, story, water and oil, bread and wine, and community, and the leash to division, evil, and pain is broken. We wait steadily for the gift of resurrection, the surprise in our lives that changes everything.

Before we celebrate Easter, let us be steady in our awareness for what we wait. Life is in the hands of God and we rest in the assurance that our pain, our loneliness, our fear, our injustices are ultimately resting in God. We entrust ever aspect of our lives to the quiet within today, on Holy Saturday.

Before we celebrate Easter, let us realize that we let go of our illusions in Triduum. The passion, death and resurrection of Jesus allows to finally rest in the complications of life. Life does not always turn out as we had planned. Sometimes it totally surprises us with ecstatic hope.

Before we celebrate Easter, let us understand who we are in God. Our following has brought us this far. We shall walk toward this unknown grace with steady and purposeful hearts. Our second birth may bring us toward mercy, love and understanding and then we shall bear the quandary of how to accept such a gift.

Before we celebrate Easter, let us quiet everything that remains restless within us. Let us come to the place where our hearts know for certain that love is not lost.

Before we celebrate Easter, let us be aware that these days are not a three-act play from the past, but a grace that invites us to follow more completely, more lovingly, with a greater depth of hope for our world and even for ourselves.

Questions to consider:

 In the liturgical stillness of this morning, for what do you truly wait?

In this quiet of your heart, what illusion do you need to let go of?

In this hope for new birth, what do you pray for in our world?

In this Triduum, what have you experienced, what have you noticed, what has surfaced within your emotions and heart?