Holy Saturday Prayer

Lord, the dark Friday just past we know full well.
Yes, Lord, we know it full well.
The trees of blood.
The forgiveness of thieves.
Your shrieks about work completed and broken croaks of forsakenness.
We have the stories and the songs of Friday, and we have the wisdom to call it “good.”
But Friday flows uninterrupted into Saturday,
And, good Lord, what do we know of Saturday?
Of its graveyard silences. Its entombed hopes. Its dull, guarded, locked nothingness.
Perhaps we know it deep in our guts better than we care to admit—even to you.
Deliver us, good Lord, through the blood—not only as it drips from the cross, but as it dries upon the slab.
Deliver us, good Lord, from both hot dying and cold death,
Deliver us, good Lord, from both tenebrae and rigor mortis.
Amen.

By Robert P. Fugarino. © 2015 Alive Now. Permission granted to use in corporate worship.