Holy Week Meditations: Saturday 8 April
| Sat Apr 8 |
am: 95, 88 pm 27 |
Job 19:21-27a | am: Heb 4:1-16 pm: Rom 8:1-11 |
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HOLY SATURDAY
LITURGICAL THEME FOR THE DAY: This is the Blessed Sabbath. The “Great Vigil” is the day which connects Good Friday, the commemoration of the Cross, with the day of His Resurrection. To many the real nature and the meaning of this “connection”, or “middle day”, remains obscure. For a good majority of churchgoers, the “important” days of Holy Week are Friday and Sunday, the Cross and the Resurrection. These two days, however, remain somehow “disconnected unless one engages in the Great Vigil this day of transformation, the day when victory grows from inside the defeat, when before the Resurrection, we are given to contemplate the death of death itself. All this is expressed, and even more, all this really takes place every year in this marvelous morning service, in this liturgical commemoration, which becomes for us a saving and transforming present.
MEDITATION OF THE DAY: Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear. He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all”. Christ answered him: “And with your spirit”. He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light”.
PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen
Holy Week Discipline – Attend part or all of the Great Vigil of Easter and observe the Solemn Fast
ANCIENT WORDS/PRESENT GRACE: “But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.”- Sir – Walter Raleigh
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