This blog follows the daily bible readings of the Catholic Church

Reading 1, Is 55:1-11

1 Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come! Buy and eat; come, buy wine and milk without money, free!

2 Why spend money on what cannot nourish and your wages on what fails to satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and you will have good things to eat and rich food to enjoy.

3 Pay attention, come to me; listen, and you will live. I shall make an everlasting covenant with you in fulfilment of the favours promised to David.

4 Look, I have made him a witness to peoples, a leader and lawgiver to peoples.

5 Look, you will summon a nation unknown to you, a nation unknown to you will hurry to you for the sake of the Lord your God, because the Holy One of Israel has glorified you.

6 Seek out the Lord while he is still to be found, call to him while he is still near.

7 Let the wicked abandon his way and the evil one his thoughts. Let him turn back to the Lord who will take pity on him, to our God, for he is rich in forgiveness;

8 for my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways, declares the Lord.

9 For the heavens are as high above earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts.

10 For, as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and do not return before having watered the earth, fertilising it and making it germinate to provide seed for the sower and food to eat,

11 so it is with the word that goes from my mouth: it will not return to me unfulfilled or before having carried out my good pleasure and having achieved what it was sent to do.

Reading 2, Rom 6:3-11

3 You cannot have forgotten that all of us, when we were baptised into Christ Jesus, were baptised into his death.

4 So by our baptism into his death we were buried with him, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glorious power, we too should begin living a new life.

5 If we have been joined to him by dying a death like his, so we shall be by a resurrection like his;

6 realising that our former self was crucified with him, so that the self which belonged to sin should be destroyed and we should be freed from the slavery of sin.

7 Someone who has died, of course, no longer has to answer for sin.

8 But we believe that, if we died with Christ, then we shall live with him too.

9 We know that Christ has been raised from the dead and will never die again. Death has no power over him any more.

10 For by dying, he is dead to sin once and for all, and now the life that he lives is life with God.

11 In the same way, you must see yourselves as being dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.

The garden tomb

Holy Saturday is the day of the death of Jesus: his dying is over; his rising is not yet; Jesus is dead and buried. The choice of Isaiah 55 with its images of food and drink tells us that Jesus death is our sustenance; and its image of God’s nearness tells us that in the dead Jesus, God is most near to us. 

That God is present also in the human fact that most contradicts Him, is the supreme mystery of the Christian gospel. Even death itself is invaded by the love of God. In that very place where Jesus felt the abandonment of God, God is to be found in his Son, Jesus.

 Those who are dying can believe that where they go is not emptiness but the fullness of God’s welcome. It is vital that the Christian Church proclaims this truth, and allows it to guide its ministry to the dying. Whatever arguments may be led in favour of suicide and assisted suicide, the church should be clear that it is possible to die “in Christ,” and that this is an entry into life.

 Paul, writing from his experience of conversion, urges us to bury our old life, however good or bad, and to begin again with the risen Jesus.

 What needs to die in us? That’s the question for Holy Saturday.