A Written and Visual Reflection for Holy Saturday:
Today, we cultivate sacred space as we keep vigil together in this Holy Week:
First, a visual and poetic reflection this Holy Saturday by Jan Richardson, author of the Painted Prayerbook:
On this holiest of days on our journey together, we experience the transformative power of the journey through Lent, through darkness, through the deep gifts of contemplation and into the first light of hope and rebirth. Our Interim Rector, Mary Sulerud, offers this reflection:
Holy Saturday Meditation
By the Reverend Mary Sulerud
“Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!” Job 14:12
Nearly every year during Holy Week I pull out a drawing on plain white paper of a series of stones carefully rendered to form a wall and in the center is a thin cross. On the other side of the paper is written, “this is the church with Jesus dead and waiting.” This drawing by my then 6 year old daughter summarizes the entire experience of Holy Saturday for me.
Jesus is gone. We have tasted the bitter sadness of Good Friday and the memory of his death on the cross. The last of the communion has been given. The altar is stripped bare. The church is empty of all vestiges of life containing only those who have come to wait suspended between death and life.
I am always drawn to this little drawing with its cross that slices into the stone wall. The cross a virtual black hole drawing me into what seems like an abyss of emptiness and grief. Was this what Job and the ancients imagined was Sheol, this no-thing? Yet, if the astro-physicists are correct black holes are the cradles of creation, not its absence. In the liturgical year we move so quickly from the womb to the tomb. This awful Sabbath is at heart about waiting again in another sort of womb for the life that only the risen Jesus can give.
We are to wait this day concealed in that empty place of the cross, suspended between death and life. The time has been appointed. We are remembered, and first we must rest.
Join us at St. Thomas for Easter Vigil at 7:00 p.m.
All are Welcome
Sacred Space 