Note to God

Holy Saturday is also a day of rest. According to the Jewish Law, no work is to be done on the seventh day: indeed, after the six days of creation, God rests (cf. Gen 2:2). Now, the Son too, after completing his work of salvation, rests. Not because he is tired, but because he loved up to the very end. There is nothing left to add. This rest is the seal on the completed task; it is the confirmation that what should have been done has truly been accomplished. It is a repose filled with the hidden presence of the Lord. We struggle to stop and rest. We live as if life were never enough. We rush to produce, to prove ourselves, to keep up. But the Gospel teaches us that knowing how to stop is an act of trust that we must learn to perform. Holy Saturday invites us to discover that life does not always depend on what we do, but also on how we know how to take leave of what we have been able to do.

Yes, humanly, everything is finished. I can do no more, and I do not want to do any more. But it is You, Lord, Who order me to set out again. I will set out again, therefore, not because it seems reasonable to me, but because You order me to do so. Immediately our action is elevated on to a supernatural plane, where human considerations are of no further value. We begin again not in order to succeed, but to obey. In verbo tuo! I don’t want to act any more but, my God, make of me, make in me, make through me, what seems good to You. It is not my work that I am accomplishing, it is Yours.

Many people in the world lack material goods, and also (sometimes even more harshly) suffer from loneliness, misunderstanding, the absence of genuine affection. As Leo XIV said: “There are many forms of poverty: the poverty of those who lack material means of subsistence, the poverty of those who are socially marginalized and lack the means to give voice to their dignity and abilities, moral and spiritual poverty, cultural poverty, the poverty of those who find themselves in a condition of personal or social weakness or fragility, the poverty of those who have no rights, no space, no freedom” (Dilexi te, no. 9).