Holy Week Meditations from Bishop White
Holy Saturday
Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In the midst of life we are in death;
from whom can we seek help?
From you alone, O Lord,
who by our sins are justly angered.
Holy God, Holy and Mighty,
Holy and merciful Savior,
deliver us not into the bitterness of eternal death.
Lord, you know the secrets of our hearts;
shut not your ears to our prayers,
but spare us, O Lord.
Holy God, Holy and Mighty,
Holy and merciful Savior,
deliver us not into the bitterness of eternal death.
O worthy and eternal Judge,
do not let the pains of death
turn us away from you at our last hour.
Holy God, Holy and Mighty,
Holy and merciful Savior,
deliver us not into the bitterness of eternal death.
(Book of Common Prayer, p 492)
Of all the days of Holy Week, this Passover Sabbath, the full day the body of the Crucified Lord rested in the tomb is the most difficult to experience as the Lord's disciples experienced it. We are busy with meal plans, decorating, and taking care of other details which will add to our celebration of the Resurrection. But in the time we pause to observe this day, we will be blessed.
We hear Job testifying to the shortness of life and the psalmist waiting for the Lord's deliverance. The Gospel reading gives us details of the burial, but little of the grief the followers of Jesus felt. But we can well imagine their anguish. When you and I mourn, when death pierces us, we call upon God with mixed emotions. And God is patient, and hears our cries, and knows our pain. Death is not abolished, but transformed. The grave is not the end no matter how much it feels like in the midst of intense grief. It is prayer, whether our own, the prayers of friends, the prayers of the Church, that point us to resurrection.
In this short video, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby talks about the depths of prayer that sustained him through the death of his seven-month-old daughter, Johanna, in a car crash in 1983.
 | | Archbishop Justin Welby, Songs of Praise, 24 March 2013 |
Holy God, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy on us.
(No music on this day until sundown)
Let us pray.
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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