Strange Saturday

Something strange is happening today. Beneath the cold, lifeless earth, a flame kindles. The spark we cannot see under the silent, moonless night — the warmth we cannot feel amid all the suffering, the pain, the sorrows, the death — this spark will soon erupt into a roaring, radiating flame of love and life and joy.

We misunderstand if we think of Jesus as merely some metaphysical ideal or the herald of a moral code or the fanciful projection of some poor schmucks just trying to cling to a little hope. Jesus is the healing fire. The fire that burns even in the middle of death’s forgotten country.

Something strange is happening today. Evil and sorrow are having to strain now to hold their grip. Death senses an uneasy rumbling — that ol’ snaggletooth enemy’s getting spooked. As St. Epiphanius said, “God has died in the flesh and Hades trembles with fear.”

It is a strange, strange day. Hold on.

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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 Hades trembles with fear. {St. Epiphanius of Cyprus}

The Saturday Between

On this day of stone-silence,
We sit fixed in the Saturday between.
Between tears and joy.
Between poverty and plenty.
Between ruin and triumph.
Between despair and delight.
Between forgotten and welcomed.
Between fearful and joyful.
Between war and war no more.
Between dark and light.
Between gloom and glory.
Between tears and laughter.
Between death. And life.
We sit fixed, riveted, in this Saturday between.

And this moment
Casts a pale, hallow light
Over the Long Saturday,
The many days
Where the world waits. Between.

But between is not the end, never is.
It is only between.

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