Holy Saturday: The ‘Longest’ Day

The Holy Saturday blessing of food for tomorrow’s Easter breakfast is especially popular among the Polish people. It is called “swieconka” (pronounced sh-ve-yen-sohn-ka) which means “holy food.”
Families prepare basket with the food they will eat on Easter morning – decorated eggs, sausage, ham, bacon, a loaf of bread with a cross cut into the crust, cheese, salt, horseradish, and butter carved into a lamb. The baskets are brought to the parish church on this day to be blessed by the priest.
Holy Saturday has been called “the longest of days” – the long Sabbath when the tomb of Jesus was sealed and still … when Jesus’ mother, peter, the other apostles, and Mary Magdalene waited helplessly in quite stillness, shocked wondering, worrying.
For them, trying to observe the Sabbath must have been like being in a straitjacket. You weren’t allowed to walk more than a few hundred steps – which meant that they couldn’t go to visit the tomb. All they could do was attend the Sabbath prayer service, and then sit around feeling numb.
But for us it is not an empty day. It is a day filed with expectation. We know something that the disciples of Jesus did not know on that long Saturday: Jesus has gone through death to risen life.
We are about to celebrate this great event, and because of the communion of saint, we celebrate it together with Mary, and peter, James, john, Mary Magdalene – all who have gone before us.
Take some time thinking about that … our “live” connection with those who are with the Lord … some of whom you knew personally on earth including my father, Ngwa Yemti Gabriel, Sophie Nganje, Imbolo I. Ngonje, Peter Njila, Mbome’a Veseke, and Lyombe Simon Naka.