Holy Saturday is the Lifetime of Between

The Good News for the Day, March 29, 2024

Holy Saturday (41) a

Creation begins with God shaping the sky and earth universe. Chaotic and turbulent as earth has been – utter darkness everywhere –there is a Living Different Energy hovering over its vast restlessness (Genesis 1) How an American of today’s faith might write this translation.

After the sabbath, just as the first day of the week was dawning,
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. (Matthew 28)

Science has recently told us that time is not absolute but relative. I don’t know quite what that means. They mentioned that some star exploded 3,400 years ago and we are only now seeing the light. I get that – light travels, and traveling takes time.

I see an image here that helps me understand how Holy Saturday happened 2000 years ago – but manages to describe the lifetime of each of us.

Holy Saturday is the time – however long it takes – for us to go from one life to another Life, from not existing and birth when we were not—to our mature, conscious, and responsible self– to living fully and deliberately as part of the universe.

The women and men burying the dead body of Jesus of Nazareth buried part of themselves. Their hopes and dreams in their Messiah joined the body of Jesus in the grave. What had been their spirit and life no longer existed.

And yet, knowing that death is the end – and it is – something in their spirits stayed on – as our own lives continue to exist during sleep. Jesus had intimated often enough that the end of his mortal life was not somehow A Complete End. There was something more.

So it is that we strive during this lifetime of ours to come to that new life. It is as though we are in a grave struggling to rise out of it, out of our chaotic selfishness, apathy, anger, fear, and addictions – all these destructive controls stopping us from being happy.

In other words, Holy Saturday is our lifetime of transformation from death to life, from passive inertia to the enjoyment of responsibility, from a mechanical obedience to the freedom of commitment and love, from all the stresses of fear to the realization and peace that so many things are not that important.

The End of Holy Saturday is to become a brand-new person – a spiritual being, at one with the will of God and the universe, generous with peace and forgiveness while wearing a wounded life, a heart cracked open by betrayal, and the failure of friends.

The end of Holy Saturday is to become the joyful loving embodiment of Jesus in the world today.

Saturday, March 30, 2024

Holy Saturday

Between

If truth be told, this Saturday is you

And all your waiting life to die and rise—

This precious time of what you daily do

Between the end that was – your birth which lies

To mark one end before death’s other end—

It’s now that counts! You know he died, you’ve heard

He will survive again. You wait, and how you tend –

In faith or otherwise – trust what’s absurd

Or walk away in apathy of heart –

This choice brings meaning of your life – commit

To heaven’s way of life – the loving part

Forgiving, caring, serving as your bit

Until you see that peaceful person come, Surprise! He’s waking you from being dumb!