Mary on Holy Saturday

Dear Our Lady of Ransom Family,

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Mary. In part due to the fact that, during this crisis, I’m frequently asking for the intercession of Our Lady of Ransom, asking her to free us from this imprisonment of isolation and fear that we are all experiencing. Several times, it has come into my heart a type of painful curiosity about what Mary must have experienced the morning of Holy Saturday.

The most faithful disciple, the one who gave her entire life to her son and her God, the one who knew Him better than any other human person could know him – she, on that Holy Saturday morning, was separated from the one she loved so dearly. I can’t really imagine what the pain of that separation must have been like for Mary. Because of forces outside of her control, she couldn’t be with the son that she loved, the son that stood at the center of her life. But because she was  at the foot of the cross, because she endured the loss of her son without giving in to despair, I know that she is the perfect intercessor for us during this unique Holy Week. She knows what it is like to experience the separation from Jesus that we feel as we’ve been locked out of our Churches and distanced from the sacraments.

But as much as Mary must have experienced real and true pain from being separated from the Lord, there was also likely hope and anticipation, knowing that separation, that loss, that death would not be the end of the story for her son. We come together, if not in person then in spirit, on this Easter Sunday to remember that Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead – and that makes all the difference in the world!

Yes, we are in the tomb right now. And we have been for a while. But we know, this Easter Sunday of the Resurrection, that the tomb was found to be empty. We know that the tomb could not contain the power of God’s love for us. We know one thing, the most important thing in the world…

He is Risen!
He is Risen, indeed!

Fr. Matt Bozovsky
Pastor 
Our Lady of Ransom