Tomorrow is Maunday Thursday. Today is Wednesday without a name. If you've successfully kept the ashes on your forehead this whole time, you can wipe them off now. As for the ashes in your heart ....
Holy Saturday looms ahead. Hans Urs Von Balthasar championed a consideration of this day as a day of deep contemplation. The Easter story boils down too readily to Good Friday - Resurrection without an adequate consideration of what it means that God's son, the world's savior and Lord, has died, and died as thoroughly as any human being in the course of history. More over, that Jesus' resurrection is not just a resuscitation, but a genuine new life, a renewal of the very elements of creation. That is, just as God created all things good, ex nililo, so ex nililo resurrected life walks into a fallen creation. What can this mean but a pushing back the veil of creation's fallenness? A swallowing up of death - just like Isaiah 25 says and 1st Corinthian 15 repeats.
Holy Saturday is liminal space. In many ways it is like the life we live. In that day is a promise, a promise voiced by Jesus time and again, that he would be killed and rise on the third day, and,, coupled with this, that those who have faith in him would have eternal life, but that day also contains a grim reality that is persistent and undeniable: death is everywhere and colors even our happiest moments. Holy Saturday is the time we live in. Holy Saturday is 33 CE to the year x CE. Our lives take place in such an environment: death and life existing side by side; beauty and perversity; order and chaos - all is an exile between the orientation of an old life and the reorientation of a new life. This is the story of Exodus, the wandering in the desert. On Holy Saturday we are in that desert, Christ having split the Red Sea, journeying by stages until we cross the Jordan, the river of life.
Holy Saturday is a model of our Christian life, a life spent waiting for Christ's appearance, making all things new. Meanwhile we remain faithful. We have good days and bad days. Sometimes our emotions get the better of us and we lash out or fill with anxiety. There are time where we rise to the occasion and love beyond what we thought possible. The Holy Spirit helps us, awakening us to the possibilities of understanding each other, seeking peace and promoting social justice. At times perhaps we can see the perspective of history from a Sinaic viewpoint: on one side is Egypt, a place of violence and enslavement, typified by Good Friday, and perhaps we even long for the supposed benefits of such an existence - there we were able to indulge our hatred and anger and lust; on the other hand is the promised land, God's eschatological kingdom, Easter, where we discover that we are accepted by God and express our gratitude in works of love and faith. In Egypt we feasted on leeks and onions; in God's kingdom we will feast on rich food and supple wines.
In this in between place we are called to live out the story of God's generosity in a world that tells a story of scheming and grasping and lying where necessities are scarce and must be hoarded.
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