The Day After

While there must be a million or so reflections available on the Passion event of Good Friday, and probably even more on the glorious Resurrection event of Easter Sunday, I've never read many reflections on Holy Saturday. It's never really puzzled me before, but for some reason this year it's really kinda nagging at me.

During morning prayer this morning ( well, earlier this afternoon actually), my mind kinda kept going back to that Saturday in 30 AD when the world held its breath. My imagination replayed what that day may have been like.

For the followers of the itinerant upstart preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, fear and panic. Scattered and in hiding, stunned, expecting the tramp of boots onto their doorstep at any second accompanied by the shouts of soldiery they thought were probably on the way to round them up. Debating what was next for them, wondering exactly what their role in the culture might be now. They must have thought their decision to throw in with this Jesus character a big mistake. I would think that they decided that they would probably just live the easier teachings of their rabbi quietly, personally, and stay under the radar, They figured it'd be much safer not to engage the culture with the challenging things they'd heard from their Master.

Their leader, Simon Peter, had denied the Master. Perhaps he thought the Teacher was just that, a teacher and nothing more. Certainly he was not, as Peter had earlier thought, "the Holy One of God".

Even the youngest, John, the beloved one, must have had his doubts. Not only that, he now had responsibility for supporting a mother, he had to consider that. What a heavy responsibility for a young teen.

Only the Mother, Mary, although inconsolable over the death of her only Son, held onto hope. Her only words through her constant tears were in disagreement with the others. He would fulfill His promises.

Other Jews celebrated the Passover Sabbath. Certainly the dinner conversation turned around the events of the previous day. The consensus would have been that the high priest had upheld the Law. The Law had been vindicated, Judaism was safe from another heretical upstart. But what a row that had been. King of the Jews, indeed! How dare He!

Still, there were some who wondered if maybe He could have been the One. Joseph of Arimithea must have been one. Simon the Cyrene had looked into the eyes of the condemned as he helped to bear the awful burden of the Cross and must have seen something there. Veronica gazed at the image on her apron and wondered. It certainly wasn't a peaceful Passover. Little did they realize that the Passover had been fulfilled. The journey out of Egypt was over.

Among the Romans there was talk as well. I can imagine a Roman Richard Dawkins crowing over the silliness of the whole "God Delusion", saying that all religions, even the religions of Rome were merely superstitions, that their only purpose were to enslave and to hold Man in thrall to the State and that Man could accomplish his own salvation if only we all embraced the unity ofPax Romana. Pax Romana, that is the doctrine that saves. All that foolishness about a God was unneeded, everything could be explained away as coincidence and mass hysteria.

But, even among the Pagans of Rome a seed had been planted. Not far from Jerusalem a centurion heard the news of the events of the previous Friday, scratching his head in puzzlement as he watched a young servant, recently recovered from a life threatening illness carried out his duties about the house. And deep in the fortress of Antonia, in a barracks room in the heart of the Roman garrison, a grizzled veteran of the garrison sat with his commander and stared with wonder at the lance with with the soldier had pierced the Condemned and wondered.

Jerusalem, although a relative backwater of the empire, was still the commercial center of the Judean region, especially during the Passover season. Greek merchants and other Gentiles flocked to the city for trade, sensing a quick profit. Among them too word of the goings on of the previous day spread, and that had their opinions. The forerunners of Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens could be found among them. These men would say that there was no need for religion, it just poisons everything, and besides this Jesus character wasn't so good, he embraced riff raff, prostitutes and the like. We can be saved by the philosophies of men.

"There is nothing new under the sun." Two thousand years after the events of the Friday, we still have those Dawkins and Dennets, those Harris and Hitchens among us. They've always been there, they always will be, and their message is still the same, that Man is sufficient unto himself. But those of us who examine history with a critical eye can see otherwise. We can see that somehow, we aren't what we were intended to be. Whether it be a "selfish gene" or original sin, something, somewhere, sometime has gone amiss.

We all speak of progress. Progress implies a fixed destination. A destination implies a planner who sets the destination. Planning implies intelligence. No, it's not the selfish gene that's amiss, it's we ourselves. Science and philosophy are not the answers, the answer is tomorrow. The answer is Easter Sunday. The answer is the Resurrection.

Happy Easter! He is Risen!

Til next time, all the best. Joe