“On Holy Saturday, the Church waits at the Lord’s tomb in prayer and fasting, meditating on his Passion and Death and on his Descent into Hell, and awaiting his Resurrection.
The Church abstains from the Sacrifice of the Mass with the sacred table left bare, until after the solemn Vigil, that is, the anticipation by night of the Resurrection, when the time comes for paschal joys, the abundance of which overflows to occupy 50 days.
Holy Communion may only be given on this day as Viaticum.”
From New Roman Missal, Third Edition
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: Jesus, I keep grateful vigil beside your tomb. I await the graces that will arise from this faithful abiding. As the hours pass, let me slowly empty my heart into your Divine Silence. When the morning comes, let me rise with You, transformed in Your Light.
Who would believe what we have heard? To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up like a sapling before him, like a shoot from the parched earth; there was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was spurned and avoided by people, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom people hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.
Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted.
Isaiah 53:1-4
Good Friday: when we stand awestruck before an Infinite Power Who chooses to suffer for the sake of Love.
We can neither comprehend such Love nor explain it. Before it, the words “why”, “how”, and “if” dissipate in futility. Such Love simply is, has always been, and will always be – Creator, Redeemer, and Holy Spirit.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: Let us kneel in humble gratitude before this Infinite Love. By our own sufferings, may we learn a holy obedience – an ability to hear the heart of God crying in our world. May we tender God’s heart, broken over the willful selfishness of humankind. May we give ourselves to its healing.
Adoramus Te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi, quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum. Qui passus es pro nobis, Domine, Domine, miserere nobis
We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, who by Thy Holy Cross hast redeemed the world. Thou, who hast suffered death for us, O Lord, O Lord, have mercy on us.
He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end. The devil had already induced Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, to hand him over. So, during supper, fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God, he rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist.
John 13: 1-4
Be there. Feel the astonished silence in the room as Jesus kneels before each of his disciples to wash their feet. Enter their hearts as they begin to realize he is giving them one of the final gifts of his amazing love. Imagine Jesus’ own heart as he washes the feet of each dear friend, knowing the time has come to be parted from them.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We let Jesus lean over us and pour the cleansing water of his love over us. We listen to the water, to his hands, to the silence – to hear the call to imitate his humble love in our lives.
Poetry: Morning of Fog – Jessica Powers (Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD)
Between this city of death with its gray face and the city of life where my thoughts stir wild and free a day stands. It is a road I trace too eagerly. For morning can give me nothing but a dull cold sense of having died. The towers lift like dreams. Down through the streets the beautiful gray fogs of sorrow drift. This is a city of phantoms. I am lost in a place where nothing that beats with life should roam. Only a spirit chilled into a ghost could call these streets its home. I shall go exiled to the fall of night, until I can return to the city I love where the streets are washed with light and the windows burn.
Music: Wash Me, Lord – Harvest
I thought I was so clever Thought I was so wise Surely You could never see Inside this darkness I thought that I had fooled You Now I see I was the fool Thinking that I could hide this darkness In my heart
So wash me, Lord In Your presence Wash me, make me clean There’s a stain in my heart That only You can see Wash me, make me clean
I brought You sacrifices My silver and my gold In my selfishness I tried to buy Your pleasure But Your holiness requires The offering You desire Is that I bring to You A brokеn, humble heart
So break mе, Lord In Your presence Break me, set me free There’s a stain in my heart That only You can see So wash me, Lord In Your presence Wash me, make me clean There’s a stain in my heart That only You can see Wash me, make me clean
The Lord GOD is my help, therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame. He is near who upholds my right; if anyone wishes to oppose me, let us appear together. Who disputes my right? Let him confront me. See, the Lord GOD is my help; who will prove me wrong?
Isaiah 50: 7-8
Have you had moments in your life when you’ve said to yourself, “This is it. Like it or not, face the music.”?
Some of these times are unhappy, even scary. Some of them are just overwhelming. But they are times when we realize we have no choice but to go forward – that the time has come for whatever the life-changing reality is before us.
Jesus is at such a moment. All the energies of his life have now converged to this confrontational moment where he fully discovers his Oneness with the Father and Holy Spirit.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We examine our own lives, and the shared life we live in the global community. How might the pattern of Jesus’s life, particularly in these critical moments, teach us the way to holiness and wholeness?
Poetry: from Philippians 2
I have always found this passage from Philippians to speak so much more than the printed words which carry it.
Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something thing to be grasped at, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every other name, so that at Jesus' Name, every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim to the glory of God the Father, that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified, “Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, at a loss as to whom he meant. One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, was reclining at Jesus’ side. So Simon Peter nodded to him to find out whom he meant. He leaned back against Jesus’ chest and said to him, “Master, who is it?” Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it.” So he dipped the morsel and took it and handed it to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot.
John 13: 21-26
To be betrayed is so much worse than to be outright opposed! An opponent is someone who stands against you from the beginning. You know who they are. You know how to protect yourself from them.
But a betrayer is someone who turns on you after you have given your trust. With that trust, you have handed over all your tools for self-protection. You are left vulnerable to their inconstancy.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray to be a true-hearted person, one who deserves and keeps the confidence of God and of our companions on the journey.
We pray to understand the weaknesses that may have motivated Judas, and to ask God to heal us of any trace of them in our own hearts.
Poetry: Judas Iscariot by Countee Cullen (1925)
This long but simple poem offers an interesting take on Judas. Countee Cullen was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement centered in the cosmopolitan community of Harlem, in New York City, which had attracted talented migrants from across the country. During the 1920s, a fresh generation of African-American writers emerged, although a few were Harlem-born. Other leading figures included Alain Locke (The New Negro, 1925), James Weldon Johnson (Black Manhattan, 1930), Claude McKay (Home to Harlem, 1928), Langston Hughes (The Weary Blues, 1926), Zora Neale Hurston (Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934), Wallace Thurman (Harlem: A Melodrama of Negro Life, 1929), Jean Toomer (Cane, 1923) and Arna Bontemps (Black Thunder, 1935).(information from Wikipedia)
I think when Judas' mother heard His first faint cry the night That he was born, that worship stirred Her at the sound and sight.
She thought his was as fair a frame As flesh and blood had worn; I think she made this lovely name For him— "Star of my morn."
As any mother's son he grew From spring to crimson spring; I think his eyes were black, or blue, His hair curled like a ring.
His mother's heart-strings were a lute Whereon he all day played; She listened rapt, abandoned, mute, To every note he made.
I think he knew the growing Christ, And played with Mary's son, And where mere mortal craft sufficed, There Judas may have won.
Perhaps he little cared or knew, So folly-wise is youth, That He whose hand his hand clung to Was flesh-embodied Truth;
Until one day he heard young Christ, With far-off eyes agleam, Tell of a mystic, solemn tryst Between Him and a dream.
And Judas listened, wonder-eyed, Until the Christ was through, Then said, “And I, though good betide, Or ill, will go with you."
And so he followed, heard Christ preach, Saw how by miracle The blind man saw, the dumb got speech, The leper found him well.
And Judas in those holy hours, Loved Christ, and loved Him much, And in his heart he sensed dead flowers Bloom at the Master's touch.
And when Christ felt the death hour creep, With sullen, drunken lurch, He said to Peter, "Feed my sheep, And build my holy church.”
He gave to each the special task That should be his to do, But reaching one, I hear him ask, “What shall I give to you?”
Then Judas in his hot desire Said, "Give me what you will." Christ spoke to him with words of fire, “Then, Judas, you must kill,
One whom you love, One who loves you As only God's son can: This is the work for you to do To save the creature man."
"And men to come will curse your name, And hold you up to scorn; In all the world will be no shame Like yours; this is love's thorn.
It takes strong will of heart and soul, But man is under ban. Think, Judas, can you play this role In heaven's mystic plan?"
So Judas took the sorry part, Went out and spoke the word, And gave the kiss that broke his heart, But no one knew or heard.
And no one knew what poison ate Into his palm that day, Where, bright and damned, the monstrous weight Of thirty white coins lay.
It was not death that Judas found Upon a kindly tree; The man was dead long ere he bound His throat as final fee.
And who can say if on that day When gates of pearl swung wide, Christ did not go His honored way With Judas by His side?
I think somewhere a table round Owns Jesus as its head, And there the saintly twelve are found Who followed where He led.
And Judas sits down with the rest, And none shrinks from His hand, For there the worst is as the best, And there they understand.
And you may think of Judas, 'friend, As one who broke his word, Whose neck came to a bitter end For giving up his Lord.
But I would rather think of him As the little Jewish lad Who gave young Christ heart, soul, and limb, And all the love he had.
Music: Heaven On Their Minds – Judas’s song from Jesus Christ Superstar
Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil…
… Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial.
John 12: 3;7
Mary knows. Even though theories bounce back and forth about how Jesus will be received in Jerusalem, Mary knows.
She knows that someone she loves is on the brink of a desperate confrontation, and she cannot change it. What she can do is to cherish his presence by a silent act of love that strengthens both of them with a holy grace.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We know. We know what Jesus did for us – still does for us. And there are no words adequate for our thanks. But our quiet prayer as we absorb the astounding mystery of Christ’s love – may it be an anointing of gratitude.
Poetry: Anointing at Bethany – Malcolm Guite
Come close with Mary, Martha, Lazarus so close the candles stir with their soft breath and kindle heart and soul to flame within us, lit by these mysteries of life and death. For beauty now begins the final movement in quietness and intimate encounter. The alabaster jar of precious ointment is broken open for the world’s true Lover.
The whole room richly fills to feast the senses with all the yearning such a fragrance brings. The heart is mourning but the spirit dances, here at the very center of all things, here at the meeting place of love and loss, we all foresee, and see beyond the cross.
Music: Pour My Love on You – written by Craig and Dean Phillips
Holy Week and Eastertide are times of sacred journey for Christians. We walk with Christ into the true and deepest dimensions of our lives.
All life is about journey and passage. At some time in each of our lives, we are passing:
from emptiness to abundance
from loneliness to love
from exhaustion to renewal
from anxiety to peace
from burden to freedom
from confusion to understanding
from bitterness to forgiveness
from pain to healing
from mourning to remembrance
The great Feasts of Holy Week and Easter, and the reflective weeks that follow, assure us that God accompanies us in all our journeys from darkness to light. The sacredness of these days invites us to quietly name whatever darkness surrounds us and our global family, and to reach through it to the hand of God. Like a parent leading a child in from the storm, the God of Easter longs to bring our hearts home to fullness and joy.
During these coming weeks, I will continue offering reflections centered on a single word, since many of you have expressed to me an appreciation for this approach. In the archives listed on the right of the blog, you can access more extensive reflections for each day of the liturgical cycle, accumulated over the past six years.
As we begin these sacred days, let’s pray for one another. And let us pray particularly for those whose current lives are closely patterned on the sufferings of Christ that, with Him, they may be strengthened with Easter hope and courage.
… He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:7-11
As Jesus rode into Jerusalem, many joined the procession waving their palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna!”. Each one had a unique, personal reason for their actions.
Some just got caught in traffic.
Some just liked a parade.
Some were crowd followers, doing whatever everybody else was doing.
Some were sure this was the beginning of Jesus’s kingly triumph, and wanted to be on the right side.
Some wanted to support Jesus in whatever he did.
Some, just walking quietly beside Jesus, knew this was a momentous turn in the course of history, spinning with a mix of fear and possibility.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We join the long, historical column of believers who have accompanied Jesus on Palm Sunday. What kind of faith motivates us? What shakes the palm branches in our hearts?
Are we just “caught in traffic”, mindlessly practicing rituals, but short on practical commitment to the Gospel?
Do we parade our faith on Sundays and then return to an unfaithful life?
Is the faithful practice of the Gospel slowly teaching us the meaning of the Paschal Mystery – that the palm branch must turn to the cross’s wood before we really become Christians?
Poetry: Palm Sunday – Malcolm Guite
Now to the gate of my Jerusalem, The seething holy city of my heart, The Savior comes. But will I welcome him? Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start; They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing, And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find The challenge, the reversal he is bringing Changes their tune. I know what lies behind The surface flourish that so quickly fades; Self-interest, and fearful guardedness, The hardness of the heart, its barricades, And at the core, the dreadful emptiness Of a perverted temple. Jesus, come Break my resistance and make me your home.
So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, “What are we going to do? This man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone, all will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our land and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.”
John 11: 47-50
From the moment described in this Gospel, down through the ages, the name “Caiaphas” shouts infamy. At a moment when he could have made all the difference in history, Caiaphas folded to political expediency, planting the seed for Jesus’s crucifixion.
Moral courage is a gift of the Holy Spirit. It strengthens us to tell the truth when doing so may cost us life, limb, or desired status in the world.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
With the gift of free will, God has given us tremendous power, just as God gave Caiaphas. Our words, or our silences, can make or break the flow of grace in the world. By the practice of prayerfully considering our allegiances and testimonies, we can fortify our spirits with a sacred honesty – the kind which Caiaphas lacked on that momentous day.
Why am I making this choice?
Why am I voicing this opinion?
Why am I standing on this side of justice or mercy?
Who benefits, or who suffers, because of my stance?
And, ultimately, will my testimony make the way for God’s grace?
Poetry: All Is Truth – Walt Whitman
O me, man of slack faith so long! Standing aloof—denying portions so long; Only aware to-day of compact, all-diffused truth; Discovering to-day there is no lie, or form of lie, and can be none, but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself, Or as any law of the earth, or any natural production of the earth does.
(This is curious, and may not be realized immediately—But it must be realized; I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest, And that the universe does.)
Where has fail'd a perfect return, indifferent of lies or the truth? Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man? or in the meat and blood?
Meditating among liars, and retreating sternly into myself, I see that there are really no liars or lies after all, And that nothing fails its perfect return—And that what are called lies are perfect returns, And that each thing exactly represents itself, and what has preceded it, And that the truth includes all, and is compact, just as much as space is compact, And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth—but that all is truth without exception; And henceforth I will go celebrate anything I see or am, And sing and laugh, and deny nothing.
I hear the whisperings of many: “Terror on every side! Denounce! let us denounce him!” All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine.
Jeremiah 20:10
Oh, the deadly power of a fragile whisper! Its insidious influence seeps into souls, germinates, and grows into fictional suggestions, untested prejudices, and effective shunning by the “in” set.
Whispers are the emanations of fear – we may fear what is different, what we cannot control, what challenges us, what actually exposes pretense in us.
Jeremiah and Jesus encountered the ugly entanglement of such whispers. But they were not trapped because they believed.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We pray their prayer for ourselves and for all who suffer the persecution of “whisperings”.
The LORD is with me, like a mighty champion: my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph. O LORD of hosts, you who test the just, who probe mind and heart, Let me witness the recompense you take on them, for to You I have entrusted my cause.
Poetry: A Word – Emily Dickinson
A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.
Music: from Handel’s Messiah: He trusted in God that He would deliver him
Lavish Mercy 