Keeping vigil...in silence...full of trust... (HOLY SATURDAY)

Holy Saturday is sacred as the day of the Lord's rest; it has been called 

the "Second Sabbath" after creation. The day is and should be the most calm 

and quiet day of the entire Church year, a day broken by no liturgical function 

and is chiefly a day of solemn vigil for the Lord’s resurrection. 

HOLY SATURDAY

"And, finally, Holy Saturday is the day of God’s silence. It must be a day of silence. We must do everything possible so that it is a day of silence, as that Day, which was the day of God’s silence. Jesus placed in the sepulcher shares with the whole of humanity the tragedy of death as a silence that speaks and expresses love as solidarity with all those ever abandoned, which the Son of God reaches filling the emptiness that only the infinite mercy of God the Father can fill. God is silent, but out of love. In this day love, that silent love, becomes expectation of life in the resurrection. We think of Holy Saturday: it will do us good to think of the silence of Our Lady, “the Believer,” who in silence awaited the Resurrection. Our Lady must be the icon for us of that Holy Saturday. To think much of how Our Lady lived that Holy Saturday, in expectation. It is a love that does not doubt, but that hopes in the Lord’s word, and which becomes manifest and splendid on Easter day." - Pope Francis, Wednesday Audience, 23 March 2016

"The last day of the Holy Week:  a fruitful stillness before the breathtaking action of the night. Perhaps only the greatest Russian writers have succeeded in painting it as it is, a pause, a last moment of waiting, made holy by the Lord's rest in the tomb.

The Church is waiting at the tomb and weeps.  She sees where the Lord has been laid, where the woman had buried Adam, where man is buried where he had come to grief through her evil counsel. She sees it and weeps. She weeps at the Lord's tomb, as the Lord wept for Lazarus: for sin which killed the giver of all life. But her tears are soft, and she is at peace. . . .

The death of Adam has lost its terrors in the tomb of Christ. The death for obedience' sake has snuffed out sin. No longer does a massa damnata blunder on from sin to sin and death to death, but the body of the obedient Christ rests in hope.  A foreboding of the happy chance of fault which merited such and so great a redeemer. It is a foreboding of the blessedness of suffering earning 'the name which is above all names', and the 'glory of God the Father', which makes the seers — men and the Church — at peace and full of hope."

D. Aemiliana Löhr, The Great Week

“Today a great silence reigns on earth, 

a great silence and a great stillness. A great 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. . . 

He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep." 

From ancient homily, Liturgy of the Hours, Holy Saturday

"... Holy Saturday...the more I reflect on it, 

the more this seems to be fitting for the nature of our human life:  

we are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing in the full light 

but walking toward it full of trust." 

- Pope Benedict XVI, Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977 

He provides, we trust...

"Catch, then, O catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies!" - St. Jerome

"If Christ did not want to dismiss the Jews

without food in the desert for fear

that they would collapse on the way,

it was to teach us that it is

dangerous to try to get to heaven

without the Bread of Heaven." ~ St Jerome

 

St Jerome

c. 331- 420

Early Church Father, Doctor of the Church 

Brilliant and thorough scholar and writer 

Translated Scripture into Latin (Vulgate) 

Consultant to Popes and Bishops 

FEAST DAY - September 30

Bartolomeo Cavarozzi ~ St Jerome

 "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." - St Jerome

Click here: St. Jerome - YouTube (2 mins)

St Jerome, pray for us!

Death by love... (Good Friday)

O crux, ave spes unica! 

(Hail, O cross, our only hope!)

GOOD FRIDAY

Sweet the timber, sweet the iron,

Sweet the burden that they bear! (Hymn:  Faithful Cross)

"Holy Friday is the culminating moment of love. The death of Jesus, who

on the cross abandons Himself to the Father to offer salvation to the whole world, expresses the love given to the end, without end.  A love that intends

to embrace all, no one excluded. A love that extends to every time and place:

an inexhaustible source of salvation from which each one of us, sinners,

can draw. If God has shown His supreme love in Jesus’ death, then we also,

regenerated by the Holy Spirit, can and must love one another."

 - Pope Francis, Wednesday Audience, 23 March 2016

"Nature is in mourning covered with darkness during the Holy Hour of the first Good Friday.  The chants of the heavenly Jerusalem are interrupted.  The entire court of Heaven waits in order to receive the last throb of the Heart of the Man-God, the victim of Golgotha.

Fervent loving souls, 

we are truly at the summit of Calvary: 

it is the Holy Hour!

A loud voice resounds in the heights, a voice that says: "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.'  And bending His lacerated Head, Jesus Crucified dies of love.  It is His Heart which out of love for us has brought Him to death.  All glory to His loving Heart which gave us life and which now is stilled in death!"- Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey  

Image above:  Christ Crucified ~ Viktor Vasnetsov (1896)

Souls have all the same price,

which is that of the Precious Blood of Jesus."

Blessed Charles de Foucauld

"Do grant, oh my God,

that when my lips approach Yours to kiss You, 
I may taste the gall that was given to You;

when my shoulders lean against Yours,

make me feel Your scourging; 
when my flesh is united with Yours, in the Holy Eucharist, 

make me feel Your passion;

when my head comes near Yours,

make me feel Your thorns;
when my heart is close to Yours,

make me feel Your spear."

St. Gemma Galgani

“We adore Thee, O Christ, and we praise Thee ...

because by Thy Holy Cross Thou has Redeemed the World.”

"Your love is my only martyrdom.
The more I feel it burning in me,
The more my soul desires you…
Jesus, make me die of love for you." 

St Thérèse of Lisieux

Divine Mercy Novena begins today
 Click here: DIVINE MERCY NOVENA PRAYERS

Go ... just as you are ...

(Jesus) "... reign in the most secret recesses of my heart, there where

my most secret thoughts are conceived, where You alone have free access,

in this deepest sanctuary where human thought cannot penetrate."

- St Faustina (Diary, 1721)

 

Painting:  Candlemas Day ~ Marianne Stokes

 

Go to our Lord just as you are.

Be natural in your meditation.

He wants the thought and prayer of that heart

as the genuine expression of its love for Him.

 

Saint Peter Julian Eymard

Unlock your soul !

He has taken me to the banquet hall,

and his banner over me is love. – Song of Songs 2:4

“Let your door stand open to receive Him, unlock your soul to Him, offer Him a welcome in your mind, and then you will see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, the joy of grace.

Throw wide the gate of your heart, stand before the sun of the everlasting light."

St. Ambrose