My childhood memories of Holy Saturday are that it was kind of a day spent in limbo. It didn't carry all the excitement and suspense of Christmas Eve nor all the austerity and sadness of Good Friday. It was more of a day of preparation and recovery. Mom would put some eggs, bread and sausage (and always a bottle of horseradish) for Easter Sunday's meal into a couple of baskets and we would take them to church where Father would bless them as part of a tradition popular among the Poles. Part of the day would be spent coloring eggs and helping in the kitchen, but overall, I always recall the day feeling kind of "numb" to me. Now that I have a few more years under my belt and some deeply personal experiences of death, I might compare the day's feeling to that of a wake: one is emotionally drained from the initial shock of the loss of a loved one, leaving behind a headache, a racing mind and a general sense that the whole thing is surreal and can't be true. This is a dream right? This really can't be happening, can it?
I really have not had that feeling about Holy Saturday for many years, but I sense that today is going to be like that for me once again . . . torn between the anticipation of what is to come but not being able to fully let go of that which has already happened.
The question du jour yesterday from the friends I ran into at the Walk for Justice was, "I bet you can't wait until Sunday, can you?" (In this sense, I felt a connection to the Muslim experience of Ramadan where it is very common to ask one another, "How is the fast?") Surprisingly, I don't have much of a ready response for that question. For some reason, I felt a bit uneasy talking about it. It made me question one last time whether or not I should have blogged about the fast. It has been a constant internal battle for me trying to come to terms with sharing this deeply personal experience in such a public fashion and I guess it will be that way until the bitter end. "Yeah," I would say, "I will certainly be glad when Easter is here." But deep down there was so much more I could have said. Self-doubt is not one of my more endearing qualities.
About an hour and a half ago I woke up early for what will have been my final pre-sunrise breakfast on what may prove to be one of the longest days this entire Lent. We will be attending the Easter Vigil at 8:00pm and I am presuming that Mass will be about two hours long, potentially making it as much as sixteen hours between meals. As such I have been both looking forward to and dreading this day all week.
And perhaps that is what this day may have been like for Jesus' family and friends. The reality of what happened the day before weighed heavy on their hearts, making this day a painful one full of doubt, fear and lingering sadness. At the same time they must have been looking to the future and asking, "What next? Where do we go from here?"
That is a question I ask myself, "What next? Where do I go from here?" Perhaps the joy of Easter will bring some clarity to this, but I doubt it. In many ways I feel like I have not even begun to understand the meaning of the past forty-six days. Being able to eat whenever I please is not really going to be an answer either. Offering material answers to spiritual questions seems a tactic necessarily doomed to failure. Maybe that is the real gift of this Lenten Ramadan . . . a conditioning of the self into a heightened awareness of what lies beyond the stomach and the mind, a recognition of the God who is both present to me and escapes my grasp at the same time.
Meanwhile, like Jesus' friends I will wait, not knowing what tomorrow will bring.
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