During Holy Week we accompany Jesus. Or maybe, more precisely, Jesus breaks into our ordinary lives and changes the rhythm through feast and death and resurrection. Each day we trace the last steps of Jesus in Jerusalem with our own actions, fasting and prayer. From Holy Thursday through Good Friday, the quiet of Saturday, the dazzle of the Vigil and into the glorious hope of Easter morning we make the time to remember. We open our hearts to be changed by the Lord.
Listening to the story of the last hours of Jesus’ journey we remember the voices of denial and betrayal. Bent down with a basin of water we remember how he served them. Lifting up the bread and the cup we remember how he loves us. Keeping vigil in the night we remember how he prayed. Hands and lips touching the grain of the wood we remember that great sacrifice beyond our imagining. Fire roaring in the night, candle lit, water blessed, stories sung and told we remember the journey of God’s people and how it continues today. Bells pealing, lights streaming, flowers revealed, we sing God’s praises and proclaim “Alleluia” anew.
This year I would like to pause to remember one of the most forgotten, yet critical moments in the journey of Jesus. After we leave in silence under the shadow of the cross on Good Friday through the longest night and the aching hours of the next day we remember Jesus in the tomb. Between the agony of Friday and the glory of Sunday we just sit with the reality of death. Here we sit. Here we wait. Facing the inevitable mystery of death that we must each face, we let Jesus come into the silence and transform it. God-made-flesh he enters our very existence even unto death and changes it forever, setting us free from the power of sin and death.
Take a moment this week to sit. To wait. Stand before the tomb with your mind’s eye and imagine your most beloved behind the stone. Take a moment, perhaps with your family, before the joyful noise of Easter to say a prayer together as we remember our Savior in the tomb. I hold you each in prayer.
Peace in Christ,
Sr. Sarah Hennessey, FSPA
This prayer is designed to be said within the family before a Crucifix on Holy Saturday. No candles are lit today.
Mother or a child: “May our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who alone by his powerful word governs all things, yet has buried the shame of the Cross and iron bonds, who has broken the bars of the bronze doors and has descended into hell, who has shone with the brightness of a new light on those who were sitting in the shadow of death — may he, the sun of justice, rising from the tomb, shine upon our darkness with the marvelous light of his risen Body.”
Father: The women sitting at the sepulchre
Family: were weeping and lamenting for the Lord.
Father: Let us pray. O God, who makes this most holy night illustrious by the glory of the resurrection of our Lord, preserve in the new children of your family the spirit of adoption which you have given, that, renewed in body and soul, they may give you a pure service. This we ask of you through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son.
Family: Amen.
Father: Let us bless the Lord.
Family: Thanks be to God.
Father: May the almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless and keep us.
Family: Amen.
Prayer Source: Holy Lent by Eileen O’Callaghan, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1975
