Holy Saturday: A Journey Through Holy Week
Passion Libretto Part V: Remembrance
This is the final day of this six day Holy Week offering. On this Holy and still Saturday, in the Passion Libretto Part V: Remembrance, Cynthia reminds us there is nothing to be done, everything is in the grave. All that has been set in motion, is in gestation and nothing has emerged above the surface quite yet. The texts Cynthia chose to conclude this Passion Libretto are based on Mary Magdalene keeping watch from the wholeness of love, power, witness, and solidarity. Mary Magdalene was full of grief and stability, capable of holding both of Jesus’ natures, fully human and fully divine, standing in remembrance reconnecting herself in the eternal presence. We too are invited into this remembrance.
As a way of meditatively engaging this material, we invite you to light a candle, take a few conscious breaths, find your feet, and sink into the quiet that always exists deeply within the sanctuary of your heart. Then, as you are ready, begin to listen to Cynthia’s commentary from the ear of your open heart awareness. Today’s video is about 13 minutes.
Cynthia invites us to use the last five texts of Part V as a reflection for the five weeks post Easter called the season of Eastertide. Work with the first two parts of the text in Part V, Songs 3:1 and Songs 8:6-7, by way of the practice of Lectio Divina using this simple modified version:
Read the text or portion of the text, paying attention to what word or phrase stands out to you and allow yourself to repeat it briefly.
Read it a second time, slowly listening and paying attention to what is resonating within, what is troubling, what speaks directly to the heart even if we don’t understand or know why. Listen with your three centers noticing how the text lands in your body in sensation, gestures, postures as well as emotions and feelings that emerge. Allow your mind to ponder the thoughts, associations, and images that arise. Chew on what comes up and whether there is a specific way it is speaking directly to you. Listen for what is relevant to your life right now.
Read it a third time, noticing whether a prayer or mantra emerges that can be offered on behalf of you, others, the world, or God.
Listen to the music of Part V of “The Passion,” allowing it to wash over you, resting collected as all that has taken place in the inner sanctuary of your heart continues to settle and assimilate, as you simply sit in the mystery allowing it to draw you deeper. Today’s music is about 27 minutes.
Finally, write down some of what spoke to you from this reflective meditation. What does today’s material teach you about substituted love?
As this offering comes to a close, Cynthia leaves us with a five week invitation to take with us and live into through Eastertide focusing on one of the truths from the last five sections of the Passion Libretto.
Here are her invitations for the next five weeks:
Week 1 – Work with “Behold, I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. I am the vine, you are the branches: Abide in me, as I in you.” Live into this in the light of the resurrection. What does it mean to be the recipients of the new commandment, the commandment of inter-abiding love?
Week 2 – Work with “I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. You DO know the truth and it HAS set you free.” Live into the truth is not some sort of dogma that you have to sign your name to, that the truth is the way because it is the life, because it opens to freedom and fullness and you’ve tasted that and the challenge now is to live from what I’ve tasted. How do I live the way in all of its joys and abundance?
Week 3 – Work with “Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God. And knows God, for God is Love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.“ Live in love and let that love that you live in be and bear the fragrance within your atmosphere of God, if God is love, as you live love, you live God and you know it.
Week 4 – Work with “Place me like a seal upon your heart. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” How do we perfect this love so that we become fearless, which doesn’t necessarily mean that we have no more fears, but fear doesn’t hold us back from love, perfect love casts out fear.
Week 5 – Work with “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, Even though he dies. And he who lives and believes in me Will never die.” What does that mean to you? How can this be? Does that mean that we don’t physically die or does that mean that something has already been birthed that is beyond the domain of death? Live into it. If we could actually live into this promise we would have been in a whole different place through Covid, through the hatreds and anxieties. So I invite you to live into this promise: in following this path leads to the life which is Jesus, you can operate out of something in you which already lives beyond death, you can ‘die before you die’ and through that death live like you’ve never lived before.
Thank you everyone for journeying together this sacred Holy Week and a special thank you to Finn Kirkpatrick for filming and editing the videos and Andrew Breitenberg for designing the PDF.
A blessed Easter Sunday to you,
Cynthia Bourgeault & Wisdom Waypoints Board