Holy Saturday (Easter Eve)
The Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is different from the rest of Holy Week. It feels like a day when everything should stop, an in-between time to be still and wait. In practice I've often found this one of the busiest of the year - a day to travel, to shop, to clean, to prepare food for tomorrow's celebrations. There are so many ordinary things to get on with. Churches often feel this tension. There's a contradiction between attempting to enter into the numbness, fear or despair Jesus' friends felt the day after his crucifixion and burial, while also being busy preparing Easter decorations to celebrate resurrection. There's nothing wrong with celebrating Christ's resurrection on any day of the year. But on this day it seems right to pause, imagine what it was like for those first disciples who, in spite of what Jesus had told them, really didn't expect Jesus to rise from the dead. As many feel after a death of someone close, or during...
