Holy Saturday should not become Easter Sunday. The first Holy Saturday would have been an entirely numbingly bleak affair. The one on whom Jesus’ followers had begun tentatively to pin their hopes had gone. He was not in the next room; he had been humiliated and executed. Strands of scripture that may have pointed to Jesus being the holy one of Israel would have sounded like a clanging gong. Silence for this painful Saturday is an appropriate and utterly human response.

Biblical Text – Luke 24: 13-27
13 That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem, 14 and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. 16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. 18 Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. 22 Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, 23 and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” 25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Questions

1. What do you think the words ‘we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel’ meant?

2. The words ‘we had hoped’ are sometimes very sad; how do we move beyond hopelessness?

3. The early Church set great store by the fact that the pattern of Jesus’ life followed some of the contours found in the Old Testament. Is this important you? How important is the Old Testament for our faith?

Reflection for Holy Saturday

Bitter pain, searing loss
divine abandonment, mother’s tears
mocking soldiers, cruel crown
battered body, beyond the lament
gathered together; in one place
together in silent defiant space
silence demands its sacred pause
the stillness does not wait
we need not pretend does
lest all is forgotten as the breath comes again