a pause
A Pilgrimage to the Cross
Walking through Lent with Jesus
Saturday April 23rd
Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea, and he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.
The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.
Luke 23: 50-56
When Pharoahs died, their bodies were laid in a magnificent pyramid, surrounded by treasure that they might need in the next life.
In China, the Terracotta Warriors were supposed to help the dead Emperor rule another empire in the afterlife.
When the Son of God died, his body was wrapped in linen cloth and put in a tomb in a garden.
Not a place of death, but a place of life……
Here in the pause that is Saturday is the hint that the story is not over yet.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastwards, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with the warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘God’s Grandeur’
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