HOLY  SATURDAY

How about changing Holy Saturday
to Silent Saturday or Empty Saturday?

Why?

Well, I stopped into church this morning
and it felt so silent and so, so empty.
I saw the empty tabernacle with its doors
left wide open. That was different.
Next I looked at the empty cross
from last night’s Good Friday service.
Next I sat down in the empty benches
all alone, realizing there will be no singing
or public praying till tonight’s Easter Vigil.

Silent Saturday. It seems like
a good idea to shut down the prayers
and the public gatherings and just be.
Churches can be too noisy,
too much of the time – people
and priests unable to pray without
words – having to stuff “Hail Mary’s”
and “O my Jesus” into every second.
Today I just feel the need for a day
like today to just take some time
and walk around in nature’s church,
and see spring beginning, spring springing,
or to take some time to just sit
in the silence of an empty church –
especially on this Holy Saturday morn.

Okay!
Maybe “Holy” is better for this Saturday.

“Where have they taken my Lord!”
Where did you go Lord Jesus – after
they took you down from the cross,
after they took you out of your mother’s arms,
especially when she wouldn’t let go –
after they put you in the brand new
empty tomb – where did you go?

Scriptures and creeds and knowers,
say you rose again the third day
after you suffered death and were buried.
Icon makers and visionaries with great
imaginations have you wandering around
in the clumpy complicated underworld
of death – reaching for Adam and Eve
and meeting patriarchs and prophets –
and all those who have gone before you.

Okay. But I don’t wonder about this
on this Saturday morning. I want silence.
And tomorrow I want Easter Faith
and the hope of waking up after I die
and meeting you, Lord Jesus, and all
those I have met not enough in this life.
How this happens I really don’t care.
When I die, I just want to hear you Jesus
standing at my grave, screaming out my name –
and if you do this the very second
after I die, all the better. Amen.

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Icon on top: Harrowing of Hades  - by Dionisus (15th Century) - in the Ferapontov Monastery - which flourished from the 15th to the 17th centuries. It is located in the Vologda region of northern Russia.