Saturday, April 4

Silent Saturday

Reflection from Marc Mullinax

Today, Silent Saturday is a day of apparent defeat. Jesus is dead, and seems gone for good. Inside the tomb, his cadaver lies silent and lifeless, linen-wrapped. A corpse offers no reply to our grief, and in this seemingly final state; the grave appears to havthe final word. For the disciples - and for us - it is a barren Saturday, where we sit in grief and wrestle with doubt, questioning if - and how - the whispering promises of resurrection will come true.

The silence of the tomb, particularly on this Silent Saturday between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, offers to us an immersive theological and emotional pause. It is a day of deep silence that follows the loud wailing of the faithful and the jeering of the crowds on Good Friday. The silence of this day is less an absence of noise, and more a holding space wherein our waiting, our mourning, and hidden divine action all meet.

While God is working out the divine intentions of Jesus’ death, for the confused and despairing disciples on earth, the tomb becomes an in-between, liminal, even “thin place” for the disciple. Saturday - the Sabbath - is a time for those who have walked with Jesus during these 40 days to say goodbye to an old understanding, and to await in faith for what is not yet clear. It’s a day to pray prayers we have not yet seen answered, and to await the answers that are on the way. Could this be what “practicing resurrection” means - learning to wait within the silence where new life is already at work, though we cannot yet see it?

In essence, the silence of the tomb is the necessary “pause” that prepares us for the mystery of Easter Sunday. It is a day to sit in the quiet, with the dawning fact that Sunday is coming. The followers of Jesus are about to see that hope is a story, and silence is an integral part of that story’s plot.

There is a place in us, a place where we have always been whole. Easter is the resurrection of this sacred condition. On this Saturday, we wait in silence - trusting that this wholeness, though hidden, is not lost, and will rise again.

“Practice Resurrection”