Holy Saturday: Bursting Into the Upper Room

Today’s Mass Readings

Tonight’s litany of readings invites us to remember what has mattered to God over the course of humanity’s tumultuous relationship with God: the goodness and beauty of creation; faithfulness to being beloved; liberation for enslaved peoples; hearts softened by tender mercy; trust in the abundance of grace; desire for Wisdom. These things matter to God.

Mary Magdalene Runs and Tells the Disciples That the Body of Christ Is No Longer in the Tomb, by James Tissot

Perhaps it was remembering these things that gave the women from Galilee the courage to quietly prepare their spices of mourning and slip away from the upper room with all of its shame and guilt and fear. Maybe they recalled these things as they traversed the dangerous darkness—of Jerusalem and their own grief—in order tend to the Teacher. Maybe it was the memory of these things that made it possible for them to believe that something impossible might have happened in his tomb, now empty.

No doubt the things that matter to God burst back into the upper room along with them as they breathlessly reported that “the living one” was not “among the dead”!

Indeed, what good news this is for us disciples today! None of the things of our upper room mentality—paralyzing horror at the Golgothas of our time so fresh in our minds, despair at our failures and betrayals, desolation that nothing ever changes, fear about what might come next—can entomb the “way out of no way” that is the Living One.

God’s love still matters and is bursting into the upper room. Live in the joy of possibility!

Reflection Questions:

Which of the things that matter to God matter most to you?
If you had to describe the atmosphere in your “upper room”, what would it feel like?
What possibility promised by the resurrection have you been longing for?

Maureen O'Connell, Ph.D.

Maureen H. O’Connell is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics in the Department of Religion and Theology at La Salle University. She recently published Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness with Beacon Press.

Maureen H. O’Connell es profesora asociada de ética cristiana en el departamento de religión y teología de la Universidad La Salle. Recientemente publicó Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness con Beacon Press.