http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/041914.cfm
“He has been raised from the dead!”
Tonight, Catholics all across the country, after braving through seven long readings from the Old Testament, each with their own Responsorial Psalm, and an epistle, will finally rejoice at hearing the Good News we have been waiting all of Lent to hear. That is what today is about: waiting. No masses are celebrated commemorating Holy Saturday, it is a time of quiet reflection and anticipation.
Everyone in the City can identify with this sense of waiting. Through a particularly difficult and bitter winter, every day in February and March I would wake up and check the weather app on my phone, hoping for a promising change in the weather forecast. Each day, as disappointment would come, I would nostalgically recall the warm spring days of years past, renewing my excitement for the inevitable turn in the weather.
In a similar way, I think that is what today is about. After the disappointment and heartbreak that comes with Christ’s passion, remembered on Good Friday, we spend Holy Saturday waiting for His return in the Resurrection. As we do we recall God’s infinite goodness. The plethora of Old Testament readings read tonight, that anticipate the Gospel of Jesus’s resurrection, detail some of the most famous moments of God’s goodness in the life of the Israelites: creation, God’s promise to Abraham, God’s liberation of the Israelites from the Egyptians, etc. These readings are supposed to remind us of the many times that God has been good to His followers, culminating in God’s greatest act of love and redemption found in the resurrection. As we spend today prayerfully waiting, anticipating the Good News of Easter, take a moment to recall a time you have felt God’s blessing in your life, and offer it up in thanksgiving of God’s greatest gift of all: His son.
Greg Pfeiffer
FCLC 2014
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