On her website, The Painted Prayerbook, Jan Richardson speaks about the "in between day"...the day between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. I have said to many people...please...don't fast forward to Easter Sunday! Even though we KNOW that He Lives, there is so much to bless our souls when we intentionally remember that somewhere between the death and the resurrection, Jesus descended into hell (to the dead).
He moves into the deepest and darkest and emptiest aspects of existence to redeem and reclaim all that is! Stay with the power of that kind of love....Sunday is coming...but what opens when you stay, for just a while, with Holy Saturday?
Whatever Christ was up to (or down to) on Holy Saturday, for his followers it was a day of sorrow and bewilderment. Bereft of the one around whom they had shaped their lives, they had to choose whether they would isolate themselves in their sorrow and fear, or whether they would remain together and wait for a way to present itself.
Holy Saturday is not a day for answers. It is a threshold day, a day that lies between, and so resists any easy certainty. It is a day of waiting, of remembering to breathe, of willing ourselves to turn to one another when grief lays hold of us. It is a day to open ourselves to the one who goes into the places of deepest pain and darkest fear, in order to bring us out.
Jan Richardson
I offer also, (once again) a poem/prayer which emerged from one of my own Holy Saturdays.
The Harrowing of Hell
I dwell in torment….
My soul is empty…agonized…
Every small or grand wrong I ever did is wrapped around what’s left of my spirit’s heart…like cords of iron. Every motion I make clamps the vice of my sin another degree…and every day I am drawn more deeply into the yawning chasm that is eternal….dark….despair. I thought death was finality…that it was total nonexistence….
That would have been better… far better.
The empty desolation of all that I ever was is aware of the skulking presence
Oh my soul… it is the Angel of Darkness… holding me in its chilling burning clench…. Providing empty infusions that sustain me with perpetual, hopeless LOSS….
In the center of my heart, yet in the remote distance I hear LOVE silently moaning….A strong yet beaten voice cries out “Father…. Why have you forsaken me?”
Then…. From beyond wherever I am, a stirring of windy breath and a voice crying out. It splits the cosmos with: “It is finished….”
╬╬╬
In the center of my desire, yet in the remote distance something stirs…. Like new life nestled deeply in a womb…
Chains, shackles and weights are loosened, lifted up in life breathing joy…
Eyes long dissolved see Love and hear forgiveness claiming a parched soul. I am enfolded…claimed…. Gathered into the ONE who formed fibers and flesh in the bowels of the earth long before time began…before there ever was time….
Alpha…Omega….Priestly Beloved Companion….Oh Lord… My God…. How can it be that you came here to find me?
What more can I say…..Ah…..Holy Jesus…. Thank you…….
(poem by Pamela Czarnota -- citation requested)
1 comment:
And so Today, this Saturday, I paused for a moment during my busy-ness. I said to myself, Jesus was transforming His dead body to His new
body and overcoming death. Passages I have read regarding the transformation indicate that on Easter Sunday, when Mary came to visit the tomb, she saw Jesus, didn't recognize him at first, then He said....... "do not touch me." There are several versions of what first occurred on Easter Morning. One of my earlier discussions with a religious student indicates that Jesus was still transforming Easter Morning and could not be marred by human touch until He was complete in Spirit. Whichever how it occurred, it is the most fabulous lesson ever. How do we overcome death? How do we overcome our bodies? He says, even we can do things that He did.
BTW.. we were watching some new home DVD's we had transferred over from 1958.. You and Jeff had your Easter Best on. You in a light blue long coat with a beautiful matching light blue hat, white socks, black patten leather shoes and a black purse. Jeff had a hat on too and his suit was in the same light blue color that you had on.. FUN.
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