Everything is quiet now. There is nothing left to be said. Nothing can be said. Our dust settles upon the ground and the wind of the week has stopped swirling. It is very quiet.
We cannot wait. By that, I mean, we ought not to wait. By that I mean, to wait is betrayal of the week. Peter does not wait, he disavows and betrays. He is hopeless. We, too, must dash our hopes against the rocks. If resurrection is to be believed, it must be unbelievable.
Holy Week is the lead up to an expected death. And the repetition of the Christian year makes Easter all the more expected. So what is described in the gospel narratives as the believers' hopes dashed after the crucifixion is treated by everyone afterwards as merely a hiatus of a day until the happy ending. Some churches will hold a vigil until the dawn of Easter. A vigil is an expectation. But we must dismantle expectations.
In a way, Holy Saturday is the last day of the Christian year. The year ends in not death, but the dead. Today is the Day of the Dead. It is the day of unbelief. Everything is upended. The earth is upended. The sky is upended. We are upended. Our hearts are upended. Our faiths, hopes, and loves are upended. Everything is reversed.
Why does everyone focus so much on tomorrow today? Today is today. What is so wrong about today? What is wrong about the emptiness of today? What is wrong with the heavy emptiness, the void of today? There is nothing wrong. And that is an upending.
And we cannot believe that this has happened, this upending. It is so shocking to us. It is so traumatic. And this is good. It is a day to sit in our ashes, the ashes of ourselves, the dust of ourselves. Our ash and dust is wet with tears, because we are human. Today is the end of our year. Today is the end. Believe it.
