Holy Saturday | iPray with the Gospel
Today the altar is left bare and no Mass is celebrated. Holy Saturday is a silent day. Creation is in silence. Heaven is in silence too; the angels haven’t forgotten what men did to Jesus yesterday… Christ’s Body lies in the grave, and you and I sit by the Corpse in grief. His cold, dead Body still bears the scars of the intense suffering, those mortal wounds on His Body that will remain visible for all eternity. They remind humanity of the price of our sins. See on His serene Face the injuries received to erase our sins. See there the marks of the blows received in order to refashion our warped nature in His Image. On His Back see the impression of the scourging endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon our shoulders. See those Hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for us; the holes on those Feet that walked the earth, giving hope.
His disciples are weeping in a dark corner of Jerusalem, not daring to hope. Their Master is dead. Their hopes are dead. Their dreams are over. The Body that they followed, the One they loved, is now cold and stiff. Jesus is dead. We would love to remind them that Holy Saturday is past. Holy Saturday was only ‘once’ and is now over. Easter Sunday has come and the Dead is now alive. He will never die again! To all those Christians who today still live in a perpetual ‘Holy Saturday’, discouraged and without hope, we can proclaim that Jesus died but is not dead anymore. And the Tabernacle is not a tomb. Jesus is alive!
But today let’s stay with Our Mother. Still in sorrow as she recalls her Son’s Passion, Our Mother is serene; she has hope. She remembers the promise of the Resurrection. She teaches us to trust. With her, we hold her divine Son’s body: “I will press my arms tightly round the cold Body, the corpse of Christ, with the fire of my love…; I will unnail it, with my reparation and mortifications…, I will wrap it in the new winding-sheet of my clean life, and I will bury it in the living rock of my breast, where no one can tear it away from me, and there, Lord, take your rest! Were the whole world to abandon you and to scorn you… I will serve you, Lord”.
This article originally appeared on www.ipraywiththegospel.org. Reprinted with permission. Copyright © George Boronat.
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Rev. George Boronat
Rev. George Boronat M.D. S.T.D is a Catholic priest from the Prelature of Opus Dei, working in the Archdiocese of Southwark in London. He is the Chaplain of The Cedars Independent School in Croydon, and also works as Chaplain of Kelston Club & Study Centre (Balham) and Oakwood Independent School (Purley). He has developed his pastoral ministry mainly with young people and is the author of iPray with the Gospel: Resources to Help Young People Pray.
