Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

If much of the pandemic felt like on long Lent, especially given the pandemic really building steam before Holy Week last year, it seems like the period we are in now is something like Holy Saturday.

Holy Saturday is a liminal space. It stands between the already and not yet. It sits there as a kind of calm between the horror of the crucifixion and the exaltation of the resurrection.

It ends with a long vigil. A time where we watch and wait and listen for stirrings of hope. The day itself starts with a bit of a daze. We’re still a bit numb from all we’ve heard but feeling is returning. Grief is showing through but it is commingled with the promise we know is about to be kept.

There’s a bit of fumbling in the dark. There’s the straining to hear. There are the preparations, the making ready, the cleaning and re-ordering.

There’s a bit of a mess after Good Friday. We leave the space with vestments and vessels and the like strewn about. They’re cast off amidst the confusion of the end of things.

A hush settles as we wait for new news.

As we wait for Good News.

In that quiet stillness we make ready for what’s next. What’s new. What’s not yet but will be.

The grief of Good Friday is not undone. It is an experience they will always have. But it is not the end. What was accomplished on the Cross finds its fruit today. What springs forth is a new life made all the more vibrant, surprising, and vivid by what came before.

As we mark the in-between time in our national life. As we’ve endured the last year and wait for what’s next now that we see an end let’s also give thanks for the ways God plants hope. Let’s give thanks that even when a great stillness, a pause, is unfolding, it is just beneath the surface that love is rising.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Fr Robert