Holy Saturday reflection

A brief reflection for a day that is, to me, so holy because it is - unlike the rest of Holy Week - so common.

Holy Saturday, for me, crystalizes this life, lived as it is somewhere between the fear of death and hope in the resurrection. The God who was near is now far; the God who was alive is now dead and buried, and may never have been God at all. Easter is coming, but how would we know, how would we dare to hope?

Holy Saturday is a day for doubt, for who, on it, could help but doubt, save those without enough faith to even bother to doubt?

Doubt is not the absence of faith. Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Doubt is wrestling with faith, like Jacob wrestling with the stranger, like Jesus forsaken and alone, like Mary and Martha, mourning instead of rejoicing, that the stone had been rolled away.

But today the stone sits, both guarding and hiding the tomb of Jesus, eclipsing all hope, giving no reason for us to suspect it might move, save for by another cruel trick of a world that snuffed out the only hope we ever dared to have. Today we hide. Today we cower. Today we deny we ever had faith, ever had hope, ever had love. For today it seems better to have never been touched by the God who is dead than to have our God lay silent in a tomb, never having been God at all.