Holy Saturday

When a loved one dies, it can be a strange, numbing feeling, you sit and think to busy yourself. When your loved one suffered a painful death there is that feeling of being pulled conflicting directions. Relieved that pain is no more for your loved one but realising that you are feeling pain. It is truly a confusing time.

The words below are from Common Worship Easter Vigil

I suggest you slowing read these prayers and reading as we prepare to celebrate Easter

Say The Lord’s Prayer followed by

Grant, Lord,
that we who are baptised into the death of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
may continually put to death our evil desires and be buried with him;
and that through the grave and gate of death
we may pass to our joyful resurrection; through his merits,
who died and was buried and rose again for us,
your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Psalm 42
1 As the deer longs for the water brooks, •
so longs my soul for you, O God.
2 My soul is athirst for God, even for the living God; •
when shall I come before the presence of God?
3 My tears have been my bread day and night, •
while all day long they say to me, ‘Where is now your God?’
4 Now when I think on these things, I pour out my soul: •
how I went with the multitude
and led the procession to the house of God,
5 With the voice of praise and thanksgiving, •
among those who kept holy day.
6 Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul, •
and why are you so disquieted within me?
7 O put your trust in God; •
for I will yet give him thanks,
who is the help of my countenance, and my God.
8 My soul is heavy within me; •
therefore I will remember you from the land of Jordan,
and from Hermon and the hill of Mizar.
9 Deep calls to deep in the thunder of your waterfalls; •
all your breakers and waves have gone over me.
10 The Lord will grant his loving-kindness in the daytime; •
through the night his song will be with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
11 I say to God my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me, •
and why go I so heavily, while the enemy oppresses me?’
12 As they crush my bones, my enemies mock me; •
while all day long they say to me, ‘Where is now your God?’
13 Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul, •
and why are you so disquieted within me?
14 O put your trust in God; •
for I will yet give him thanks,
who is the help of my countenance, and my God.

Romans 6.3-11
3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Mark 16.1-8
The Resurrection of Jesus
16 When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ 4When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ 8So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.(c)

In the depths of our isolation, we cry to you, Lord God:
give light in our darkness and bring us out of the prison of our despair;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship if the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen

Rev Derek Akker

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