Pray for grace and trust that God will give it to you

Holy Saturday and the Church is silent - There are no Masses - The world waits…..Holy Saturday rests between two of the most significant days in the Church calendar…Good Friday & Easter Sunday…..And because of that, Holy Saturday often gets over looked….Think back to this time 2000 years ago…..Many people took a huge “chance” - They “bet” everything they had on a man who they were convinced was God only to watch him get ground into dust by the ruling class…….Even those with unshakable faith had to have been terrified….One can only imagine the fear - “I will be next” - “They did this to a man who performed miracles - What will they do to me?”……When you meditate on the First Holy Saturday, following the death of Christ, the fear of the first Christians must have been “off the charts!”…..Think of the few people who stood under the Cross of Jesus….”His mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala” and of course there was St John…..What made them stay when everyone else fled?…..As Catholics it’s very easy to “stay” faithful when everything is going well - But what happens when “life turns upside down?”…On the first Good Friday, not only did life “turn upside down”, but a real and present danger became a reality for every person who claimed to believe in Jesus Christ…Yet, a small group stood at the foot of the Cross…..Its very easy to say, you or I would have been among that “small group”, the “remnant”, to use a word often “thrown around” today referring to Catholics who remain faithful and authentic……But if we are honest, we can never say for sure if we would have been there at the foot of the Cross with Our Lady and St John…Fear has a way of “twisting people” and only Divine Grace can overcome “that kind of fear”, which in actuality is pure terror!…..Holy Saturday is a day in which we should contemplate just how reliant we are upon God - How weak our faith is or can be - How much we need to cling to Christ, the Sacraments, daily prayer and fasting - How we should never trust our own strengthen……Holy Saturday is special because it is a reminder - It should remind us to “never despair” - Never “count God out”…That from “nothing” God can create “something”….Its for us to wait and be patient….What we “see” is not the “whole picture”…God has a plan and each of us are apart of it…..This is what Holy Saturday is all about

“I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Good Friday has past…..Easter Sunday is not here yet…Today is Holy Saturday….Are we full of hope? - Have we become “blinded” by despair and disappointment?…….I can hear the words of St Thomas echo throughout this day…..“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail-marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe”…………For those of us today, who know that tomorrow is Easter Sunday, let us take some time to pray…Pray for the grace to never give up hope - To believe when no one believes - To remain firm when everyone “heads for the hills”…..The question however remains - ”When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”…….Pray today that you are one of those people who remain firm - “The Remnant” - Pray for grace and trust that God will give it to you……JMJ