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This year I discovered that today, Holy Saturday, is also known as 'Silent Saturday' in some traditions of the Church worldwide. This is because there is no liturgy until the Great Vigil of Easter in the evening so the Church is silent, and also because there is no mention in Scripture of what happened on this day after the crucifixion of Jesus. Also some say that it is representative of the silence of God following Jesus' death.

We who know the end of the story only get a glimpse of that sense of loss that the friends of Jesus felt, as we wait in eager expectation for the celebration of resurrection on Easter Day. 

For us, it is an opportunity for a deliberate time of silence and reflection - a time to listen to the Divine Voice around us, within us, between us. As we seek to clear our hearts and minds we can find new ways of listening, new ways of resting in the embrace of the Divine, new ways of encountering God. May the silence be a gift to each of us. 

SILENCE

There is a silence where hath been no sound,

There is a silence where no sound may be,

In the cold grave — under the deep, deep sea,

Or in wide desert where no life is found,

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;

No voice is hush’d — no life treads silently,

But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,

That never spoke — over the idle ground

But in green ruins, in the desolate walls

Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,

Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls,

And owls, that flit continually between,

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

Edgar Allen Poe

 

Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last.

Luke 23:46

Worship And Prayer
Observing Lent