A Time of Waiting -- A Holy Saturday Reflection


I was thinking about what I might say this Holy Saturday as I finish preparing my Easter sermon.  Sometimes it takes a flash of inspiration to stir the mind and heart.  So, I was glancing at my twitter feed, and I glanced upon a tweet by Jesuit James Martin.  He had placed a brief meditation of his own on Facebook.  The title looked intriguing -- "We live in Holy Saturday" --  so I checked it out.

Fr. Martin reminds us that much of our lives are spent in waiting, but the question then is -- what is the nature of our waiting?  

In the closing paragraphs he writes:

    We are called to the wait of the Christian, which is called hope. It is an active waiting; it knows that, even in the worst of situations, even in the darkest times, God is powerfully at work. Even if we can’t see it clearly right now. The disciples’ fear after Good Friday was understandable; but we, who know how the story turned out, who know that Jesus will rise from the dead, who know that God is with us, who know that nothing will be impossible for God, are called to wait in faithful hope. And to look carefully for signs of the new life that are always right around the corner--to look, just like a few of the disciples were doing on Holy Saturday.  
Because change is always possible, renewal is always waiting, and hope is never dead. 
The waiting of Holy Saturday, because we already know the rest of the story, is one of hope.  It is, Fr. Martin says, "an active waiting."  We're not passive victims of fate.  We wait in expectation, ready to hear the call of God.

In Acts 1, Jesus tells the gathered disciples to wait for the Spirit, and then, filled with the Spirit, they will be ready to take up their ministry, carrying the good news to the ends of the earth.  As we wait this Holy Saturday, may we do so full of expectation and hope.


(The image, found on James Martin's page is "The Two Marys Watch the Tomb of Jesus," by James Tissot.) 

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