Image: Unsplash/Pisit Heng
The Paschal Mystery we have just celebrated in the Western Christian Churches is written about by theologians as one event beginning with Holy Thursday through to the Easter celebration of Resurrection. However, this time is filled with so many events that our human experience and understanding requires that we pause from one day to the next to help us more fully enter into the Mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I like to think of Holy Saturday as “in-between” time. What does this mean?
This is time to pause to help us enter the mystery of which we are a part. This time is where we live our lives – between birth and death and rebirth into communion with God. As we learn from the life of Jesus we are invited into the journey of love. Any of us who watch the news or read the newspapers know that so much of what we see and read, is the opposite of love. We see a false sense of power which destroys life and love.
Image: Unsplash/Alicia Quan
This Holy Saturday if each of us paused just long enough to consider how life can teach us to love and not to be lured into a false sense of power. Jesus before Pontius Pilate remained detached from the power of Pilate. Jesus understands that he too has power that is of God. We desire to know this and can only learn its truth if we stop to listen for that longing in our hearts. Our longing for what is yet to be realized is part of the birth of what is yet to come. To long for love in our lives and our world is to be part of the creation of love. To desire wellness for our families and the earth is to stir the energies within us that can be transformed into words and actions of well-being for our world. This is the holy desire we touch on days like “Holy Saturday”. In the words of John Philip Newell, “…This is the holy desire we can be part of, to long for oneness even in the most broken and apparently God-forsaken places of our lives and our world. Desire leads to conception and conception leads to birth.” This is how we walk this journey of life and love. Blessing of love for all.
- Sister Joan Atkinson, CSJ