After a family member’s death, what do you do? Necessary phone calls, obituary, funeral preparations, the day of burial. Then what? Perhaps you walk around the house thinking there’s something to do but nothing feels right; or you stare out the window and feel there’s nothing out there or in side to fill your emptiness. You’ll treasure keepsakes and for a while hold on to items worn or used. These things give some consolation.

What consoled Mary Magdalene and the apostles on the first Good Friday-Holy Saturday weekend? Nothing there. No body. Just some “wrappings lying on the ground” and “the piece of cloth which covered the head,” and the saddest words in the Bible: “They have taken my Lord, and I do not know where they laid him.” 

We in 2026 will start our Easter morning Mass with Alleluias, but on the first Easter there was only the raw ache of loss. The first Holy Saturday was a day of silence. It was a day to wait for God. Mary, his mother, knew the emptiness would not be an absence; it was the space where God would soon break in. Then what were the happiest words in the Bible?