The mystery of Holy Saturday, of the body of Jesus deposed in the sepulcher. Pope Leone continues Catechesis on the theme “Jesus Christ our Hope” and continues to talk about death. There is no despair even when “God’s son lies in the sepulcher”. Because “this” absence “is not a void: it is expected, fullness withheld, promise kept in the dark. It is the day of the great silence, in which the sky seems silent and the land immobile, but it is precisely there that the deepest mystery of the Christian faith is accomplished. It is a pregnant silence of meaning, like the womb of a mother who holds her son not yet born, but already alive ».
Jesus is heartfelt with care, after being fallen by the cross. Changing down as “it is done with what is precious”. And John’s Gospel tells us that he was brought to “a new sepulcher, in which no one had yet been placed”. The garden recalls “Lost Eden, the place where God and the man were united. And that sepulcher never used speaks of something that has yet to happen: it is a threshold, not a term. At the beginning of the creation, God had planted a garden, now the new creation also starts in a garden: with a closed tomb that will soon open ».
Holy Saturday, then, is a day of rest. God rested “after six days of creation”. And now “even his son, after completing his work of salvation, rests. Not because he is tired, but because he finished his work. Not because he surrendered, but because he loved all the way. There is nothing more to add. This rest is the seal of the completed work, it is the confirmation that what was to be done was really completed. It is a rest full of the hidden presence of the Lord ».
We, on the other hand, struggle «To stop and rest. We live as if life was never enough. We run to produce, to demonstrate, so as not to lose ground. But the Gospel teaches us that knowing how to stop is a gesture of trust that we must learn to make. Holy Saturday invites us to discover that life does not always depend on what we do, but also on how we know how to leave on what we have been able to do ».
In silence “new life”, explains the Pontiff “begins to ferment. Like a seed in the earth, like darkness before dawn. God is not afraid of the passing time, because he is also the Lord of waiting. Thus, even our “useless” time, that of the pauses, of the voids, of the sterile moments, can become womb of resurrection. Any silence welcomed can be the premise of a new word. Every time suspended can become time for grace, if we offer it to God ».
We must learn to rest, to be in a hurry to rise: «First you have to stay, welcome silence, let us embrace the edge. Sometimes we look for quick answers, immediate solutions. But God works deeply, in the slow time of trust. The Saturday of the burial thus becomes the womb from which the strength of an invincible light can flow, that of Easter ».
Christian hope, concludes the Pope, “does not arise in noise, but in the silence of an waiting inhabited by love. He is not the daughter of the euphoria, but of the confident abandonment. The Virgin Mary teaches us: she embodies this expectation, this trust, this hope. When it seems that everything is stopped, that life is an interrupted road, remember to Holy Saturday. Even in the sepulcher, God is preparing the biggest surprise. And if we know how to welcome with gratitude what it has been, we will discover that, precisely in smallness and silence, God loves to transfigure reality, making new things with the loyalty of his love. The real joy arises from the inhabited waiting, from the patient faith, from the hope that what has lived in love, of course, will rise to eternal life».
