Holy Saturday: the waiting time

It is almost 7:00 A.M. as I begin writing.  I can hear the birds singing joyfully as they greet the first light of morning.  Dawn is slowly awakening and the sky is becoming lighter.  The sun has yet to appear but shades of the lightest orange reach above the horizon.  What an amazing morning it must have been when Jesus walked out of the tomb.  How all of creation must have rejoiced as the light of Christ burst forth into the world once more.  What jubilant songs the birds must have sung.  But that moment will be celebrated tomorrow: Easter Sunday.  Today is Holy Saturday.  Today is the waiting day.

We have already remembered and commemorated the Last Supper on Thursday and relived those moments from the Garden of Gethsemane to the scourging, crowning with thorns, carrying of the cross and crucifixion and death of Jesus on Good Friday.  Now we wait for Sunday.  We already know how this will end.  We already know that Jesus rises from the dead.

But for the disciples and followers of Jesus, this day must have been a day of despair, confusion, fear and hopelessness.  Jesus, who cured so many and even raised Lazarus from the dead, was now dead.  Killed in a brutal and public way as a message to those who dared to speak up against the religious leaders and government leaders.  Jesus did not save himself from death.  He did not come down from the cross.  He did not open his eyes when he was removed from the cross.  The God whom Jesus loved and thanked and praised did not save him from death.

Peter, who had been so outspoken in wanting to follow Jesus, in wanting to protect Jesus, denied even knowing him most likely out of fear.  Watching something so brutal happen to someone he loved and admired, someone who was his teacher and friend, must have shaken Peter's faith.  All Jesus' followers fled.  All that is except the women.  They stayed.  His mother stayed or was nearby depending on what Gospel account one reads and what one chooses to believe could have been factually correct given the time and circumstance and way of life.

With Jesus dead, the disciples might not have been sure about anything.  They spent time in the upper room praying, hoping perhaps that what they witnessed was some bad dream.  Hoping that Jesus would walk in and the life they knew with him would return to some degree of normalcy.  Whatever he might have told them to try to prepare them and whatever he might have told his mother to prepare her, the sheer brutality and horror of the events that resulted in his crucifixion and death surely must have left them all in shock and disbelief.

So on this Saturday, they waited and prayed and held on to whatever bit of faith was left in them, not knowing what will happen...


God Bless you and keep you!
Sister Pat, FMT


Holy Mary, Mother of Creation,
bless us that we may experience
God as Love in praise of all creatures,
in love of all of creation. Amen.

Father Michael Adams - www.livingrosaries.org