The 'Great Silence of Holy Saturday,' and
Todd Graff
Director of Lay Formation & RCIA tgraff@dowr.org
The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life. -Pope Benedict, Spe Salvi, #3
�reetings of Joy, and Blessings in these Easter days! We are now in the Easter season, these great and
joy-filled days when we celebrate anew the triumph of our Crucified and Risen Lord over sin, despair, and death. And, yet, it is a very different Easter season this year with many of us working and studying at home, not venturing out to be with co-workers, friends, or extended family members, and not enjoying the social activities that bring our communities together. And, many of our sisters and brothers are living in isolation in their homes and apartments, in nursing homes and health care facilities, and in prisons. Some of our health care workers are isolating themselves from their families to keep them safe. For so many, these are very painful and difficult times. At the Easter Vigil he celebrated in a nearly empty St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis invited us to ponder again the hope of the Resurrection even amidst the harsh circumstances so many are facing in our world. As he began his homily, he compared our time to the experience of Holy Saturday, the often "neglected" day of the Easter Triduum as we “eagerly await the passage from Friday’s cross to Easter Sunday’s Alleluia.” And, he reflects on the experience of the women in the scriptures who had accompanied Jesus during his ministry and during his Passion and Death: They, like us, had before their eyes the drama of suffering, of an unexpected tragedy that happened all too suddenly. They had seen death and it weighed on their hearts. Pain was mixed with fear: would they suffer the same fate as the Master? Then too there was fear about the future and all that would need to be rebuilt. A painful memory, a hope cut short. For them, as for us, it was the darkest hour.
We, like these faithful and fearful women, are experiencing “the great silence of Holy Saturday”. The Women at the Tomb
As he continues his reflection on the women, Pope Francis then notes that they did not allow the darkness of the moment and the fears they were experiencing to "paralyze" them. They did not “close in on themselves, or flee from reality.” They chose, rather, to trust and to keep on loving, and, “in the darkness of their hearts, they lit a flame of mercy.”
They continued about their task of preparing the spices to anoint Jesus’ body, not knowing that the dawn of the day to come, “the first day of the week,” would be the day that would change their lives and change history forever. Those among us offering “small gestures of care, affection, and prayer” in our own dark days are doing what these women did – “by prayer and love … sowing seeds of hope!” At dawn, the women set out on their task. And there, at Jesus’ tomb, they found not their dead Master, but encountered their Risen Lord. He greets them simply, “Do not be afraid” (Matthew 28:10). Pope Francis affirms this same message for us: “Do not be afraid, do not yield to fear. This is the message of hope. It is addressed to us, today. These are the words that God repeats to us this very night.” On this Easter morning, out of the “gloom of sorrow and regret” arises “a new and living hope” which we are given both as “a gift from heaven, which we could not have earned on our own” and as “a fundamental right that can never be taken away from us.” Our hope in the Risen Jesus is not “mere optimism … or an empty word of encouragement,” but “the conviction that God is able to make everything work unto good because even from the grave he brings life.” “Courage!”
Because of the experience of the women at the tomb in encountering the Risen Jesus, hope has been ‘planted’ in our hearts. And, because of this hope within us, we can take courage. In our neediness, in our weakness, in our frailty, Jesus speaks to us again, “Do not be afraid.” And, God reaches down to us “with a helping hand,” and says, “Courage!” Courage, like hope, is given to us as a “gift” to be received (not earned), if we but “roll away, however slightly,” the stone that blocks our hearts and open ourselves in prayer and trust. We can join in our Holy Father’s prayer:
Jesus, come to me amid my fears and tell me too: "Courage!” With you, Lord, we will be tested but not shaken. And, whatever sadness may dwell in us, we will be strengthened in hope, since with you the cross leads to the resurrection because you are with us in the darkness of our nights; you are certainly amid our uncertainties, the word that speaks in our silence, and nothing can ever rob us of the love you have for us.
Sent Forth from Galilee
Lay Formation & RCIA
Living with Hope
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Pope Francis reflects, in the final part of his homily, on the Risen Lord’s going to Galilee to meet his disciples. At the empty tomb, the angel instructs the women to tell Jesus’ disciples, “‘He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him’” (Matthew 28:7). Pope Francis notes that our Lord “goes before us … that he walks ahead of us in life and in death.” And, it is most significant that he goes ahead to Galilee – “to the place which for him and his disciples evoked the idea of daily life, family, and work.” It is there, in our everyday lives, that Jesus invites us to bring the hope and the courage of the Resurrection to one another – as family members, as students and workers, as citizens and neighbors. But Galilee is also significant in another way. It is, as Pope Francis notes, “the farthest region” from where the disciples were, in Jerusalem. It was geographically distant, but also “the farthest place from the sacredness of the Holy City … an area where people of different religions lived.” It was here, in the “Galilee of the Gentiles” (Matthew 4:15), that Jesus went to meet his disciples and to send them forth to continue his mission. Our Holy Father understands this to mean that the “message of hope” offered by Jesus’ Resurrection “should not be confined to our sacred places but should be brought to everyone.” We who are the followers of the Risen Jesus, “who have touched ‘the Word of life’” (1 John 1:1), are called – especially in the darkness and uncertainty of these days – to “offer consolation,” to “bear the burdens of others,” and to “offer encouragement.” In short, Pope Francis calls us to be “messengers of life in a time of death!” Deo Gratias!
[L]et us not give in to resignation; let us not place a stone before hope. We can and must hope because God is faithful. He did not abandon us; he visited us and entered into our situation of pain, anguish, and death. His light dispelled the darkness of the tomb: today he wants the light to penetrate even to the darkest corners of our lives. Dear sister, dear brother, even if in your heart you have buried hope, do not give up: God is greater. Darkness and death do not have the last word. Be strong, for with God nothing is lost. -Pope Francis, Easter Vigil Homily, 2020
May 2020 w The Courier w dowr.org
