Soul Stirrings: Waiting in Silence

Holy Saturday is about silent waiting. Jesus has been laid in the tomb, wrapped in the traditional burial cloths, and sealed in darkness with a large stone. We wait in the stillness of his promise of Resurrection. It is as if we are between breaths, the emptiness between words on a page. We wait with Mary.

Perhaps the women knew best this holding…this pause in the Divine plan. The other apostles may have still been in fear for their own safety, but the women kept watch. The women kept the hope alive through their silent waiting.

The agony of the crucifixion left them all numb and now there was this awful time of waiting. This kind of waiting I have experienced with many loved ones; as they wait for test results. In real life this silent waiting period does not always end in the Resurrection we had hoped. Sometimes the Resurrection is delayed and we may need to sit inside this Holy Saturday state a bit longer.

The Blessed Mother finds herself waiting again just as she was before the birth of Jesus. Once again she surrenders to the will of God the Father.

A mother feels such intense pain deep within at the loss of a child; Mary undoubtedly felt this agony mixed with the promise of her beloved Son’s Resurrection.

How she must have longed to hear his voice one more time…to look into his precious loving eyes. How she must have longed to hold him once again in her arms.

She might have heard echoing in her memory the words Simeon spoke, “And your own soul a sword shall pierce”.

She waited patiently filled with hope, clinging to the words her son spoke of returning on the third day. In spite of the stone blocking her from entering into the tomb with him; she kept watch nearby. In spite of the darkness within the tomb, Mary clings to hope.

The Blessed Mother is a brilliant example for us of Faith, Hope, and Love.  

Today the church leaves us in the stillness of darkness and sorrow to contemplate that Jesus died for each of us. The church appears barren. We have no Mass, no Holy Communion, and no Adoration.

We wait with Mary in silence.

“Soul Stirrings” for Lent

As Jason Upton writes, “…in the silence you are speaking” For some time I have intermittently spent an hour in Eucharistic Adoration and I feel God is inviting me to make a regular appointment to be in silence with him. To sit in his holy presence…to be still…to be silent…to listen. To allow him to stir up my soul. And then allow him to remove the sediment that has settled to the bottom. Cleansing it of all that is not of him…cleansing it of all that does not give him glory.
Am I ready and willing to accept these ‘Soul Stirrings’ sitting in silence before him? It is a rather unsettling feeling. Do I trust him enough to submit to the changes he wants to make in me? It is hard to ‘let go and let God’ as the saying goes.
These are some tough questions I can not honestly answer at this time. Of course my intention would be to say, ‘yes’, but secretly would I be holding back just a tiny bit?

Throughout these next forty days of Lent, please join me as I post personal reflections called ‘Soul Stirrings’ for Lent. God never asks us to be more than we can be and he never promised it would be easy.

I hope you enjoy this video as a prelude to our time together this Lent. Look at the images in this video they are a rich complement to Jason’s lyrics.

Be still and know that I am God. Ps.46:10