Today is Holy Saturday and we are in the last inning stretch before Easter, before discovering the fate that awaits the apostles, the Mary’s, the Beloved Disciple, and all of us at the tomb early tomorrow morning when the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection is discovered and proclaimed.
Each Lent offers us an opportunity to shed all that distracts us, all that makes us blind, deaf and unaware of all the many ways that God reveals his great love for all of us to throughout the year as we enter into our Lenten observance and focus on the public ministry of Jesus and his journey to Calvary and joyfully await his Ressurection.
Each Lent, our Lenten observance isn’t solely about “giving something up for Lent” just to give it up. But rather finding something that’s become a part of our life that hinders us from resting in that great love that God has for all creation. Each Lenten observance should never be done and over after 40 days with the intent that life “returns to normal” just as before Lent. Rather, each Lenten observance should be an invitation to ongoing transformance and revival of faith, of hope, of grand awareness of God’s love for ourselves and all people. With this tranformance, we shouldn’t seek to “return to normal” as it was before our Lenten observance, but carry that transformance into the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection and the year ahead. Thus, each Lent we observe is a cycle of dying to something that keeps us from celebrating fully the Love of God and being resurrected into an ever growing revival, renewal, and awareness of the abiding presence and love of God in our life and in the lives of all around us.
Is it just me? Or do others feel that this Holy Saturday observed during the COVID-19 stay at home orders and lockdown is perhaps the holiest Holy Saturday ever observed in our lifetime?
In these uncertain times of the COVID-19 pandemic and the stay at home orders to halt the spread of the virus, with the uncertainty of the humanitarian impact and economic impact all of these shutdowns will have on us, we are most like the Apostles than we have ever been in our lives.
After the Last Supper and into the Garden of Gethsemane as they watched their teacher, the man they had abandoned their livelihoods to follow and learn from; the man who had instructed them on the law, the prophets, the kingdom of heaven; the man whom they had come to know deep in their souls as their savior be arrested and tried and crucified, the apostles must have felt an enormous uncertainty like we do today. They must have struggled with what it all meant to have been led this far only to see their teacher crucified. They must have wondered, “What will I do now?”
Like them, we are probably asking the same questions as this pandemic continues on and most of the country remains under “stay at home” orders as non-essential businesses aren’t open and people are asked to stay at home and not group in groups of 10 or more. So many of us are looking forward to returning to normal.
Returning to normal. What is normal? Do we really want to return to normal when normal wasn’t really working for all of us? Just as with our Lenten journeys each year, where we shouldn’t be looking forward to returning to normal and having Easter arrive just to start doing, drinking, or eating, or saying the things we gave up, perhaps, this COVID-19 pandemic stay at home experience should be one we should look to learn from. Like with Lent, where we allow the Lenten observance to transform us, perhaps we should open ourselves to the hope of transformation, of becoming more authentically what we are called to be, to do, to reflect in our lives. Perhaps this COVID-19 stay at home experience that has so closely occurred during our Lenten observance this year in the United States can be a time for reflecting and opening ourselves up to the possibility of even greater transformance, even greater awareness and consciousness of becoming that which we are each uniquely called to be if we but seek to grow in holiness and in relationship with the Divine.
This Holy Saturday is indeed one of the holiest Holy Saturdays we have observed in our lifetime and it brings with us the great hope of what lies in store if we but trust in Spirit and let go of that desire to “return to normal” and instead seek to learn from our COVID-19 Lenten journey and grow in pursuing a “new normal” that helps not just me, but we all to grow in health, holiness, and blessed happiness.
What will await your journey, your soul as we gather at the tomb tomorrow? Sadness for what once was? Sadness’s for not finding Jesus’ body there and fearing it was taken? for not finding your old normal once the pandemic is over? Or blessed joy and recognition in knowing Jesus’ presence, in knowing He is Risen?
What will await your journey, your soul as we journey out of this COVID-19 pandemic and stay at home orders in the future? Sadness for what was before? Sadness for not finding everything the same as it was before the Pandemic? Or blessed joy, hope, gratitude and awe in realizing you are called to a greater path, a greater reflection and awareness of the Divine within your life? Will there be a greater appreciation of how we are all interconnected? even those we never saw as essential before but now do during this shutdown? Will there be a greater compassion within each of us for our fellow journeyers and sisters and brothers we pass on the road as we await the end of the pandemic and look with hope and faith and trust in following a “new normal” now that we’ve been transformed, when all of this is over?