HOLY SATURDAY Nowhere else is our Lord’s self-emptying more evident than on Holy Saturday, when he lies dead in a borrowed tomb. This is how it all ended for Jesus: A brutal and humiliating death, a hurried burial in a tomb not his… The dead Jesus of Holy Saturday is the icon of failure and powerlessness. It is on Holy Saturday that Jesus completely empties Himself for our sake. Nowhere else is our Lord’s humility more starkly visible than in the tomb on Saturday. St. Theresa of Avila, in counseling us on prayer, suggested that we imagine the Lord Jesus looking at us with both love and humility. St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote that “humility is the virtue never sufficiently praised.” It would be no exaggeration to say that Christ reveals to us that humility is truly a divine virtue. If we want to be like Jesus, we need to work on our humility. Jesus’ act of self-emptying, His kenosis, took center stage. Not only does self-emptying capture what God has been doing, but it also tells us what we ought to be doing in our lives. It is a stark contrast to what we have been accustomed to: our lifestyle of hoarding— or at least, making sure we save some for ourselves. But love is not so much about that as it is about sharing of self– i.e., self-emptying. And this is exactly what we learned from the Lord Holy Week. Each one of us are called to a life of self-emptying love. #HolyWeek Reflections from #pinsoflight
