What do I consider on Holy Saturday?

Meditation for Holy Week Retreat

Holy Saturday

30 March 2024

AMDG

Jesus is in a tomb. Creation considers whether death has the final say.  Today is the day to consider whether good turns to evil, light to darkness, life to death, everything to nothing.  God who cannot die is dead.  He let us have the final say as to whether we wanted to live or die.  We choose death, for ourselves and for him. Today we consider if this is truly the last chapter of the human story.

In Advent we wait to see if God will come to save us.  We wait, in hope and in silence, for the appearance of light in darkness.  On Holy Saturday we wait to see if darkness and evil and sin and death are victorious, and we give them the benefit of the doubt.  For God is dead, and we killed him.  Let's see if this is truly the last chapter of the human story.

It does us no good to skip today, to fast forward to tonight or tomorrow, to pretend like today isn't real or doesn't exist or can by avoided or escaped.  Holy Saturday is essential, and woe to us who pretend it doesn't matter.  

If you don't know how to consider whether bringing light from darkness, creation from nothing, was for nought, then learn how.  To know what is means to be alive means I must also consider death seriously, since the years I might lie in a tomb far outweigh the 

Today is the day to consider, which is to ponder as deeply as I can, if there was nothing, or if God regretted his creation and let everything descend back to nothing, or if there was not me instead of me, or not my loved ones instead of having them, or if I was already dead, whether the world would just be fine without me, or whether all the glory of the human experiment is just a mirage, vanishes almost immediately in the face of the eraser that is death.  

All this must be considered in the greatest of silences that is Holy Saturday.  All this must be considered, if we are also to embrace the reality of death as the necessary raw materials for a new creation.  We can't hold onto this life if it's meant to really participate in the paschal mystery.  Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat.

In the depths of the singular darkness that is Holy Saturday, there is also promised the hope that his tomb is filled with so much more potential for new light than that first abyss.

But for us to do more than wish this to be true, we must consider the possibility that Holy Saturday is my true end, and the one that I choose.

+mj