He is Near
For many catholics around the world, the lenten season is a gentle invitation into reflection, into repentance, into a quiet reawakening of one’s soul.
It is Holy Saturday now, and wrapped in soft murmurs, I began to notice
the lights are off,
the Stations of the Cross lifted off the walls,
Jesus on the cross veiled in a deep velvet purple fabric,
the tabernacle open, its red interior laid bare and waiting,
and the altar, stripped of its candles and woven laced cloths.
A sacred stillness settles.
On this silent Saturday night, the world seems to hold its breath. We sit in the pews, suspended between sorrows and promise, waiting for resurrection.
Hours pass. I am back in my room now. Nothing outwardly seems to happen and yet God is still moving, still working in the unseen. I gather my laundry, folding each piece slowly, placing garments where they belong. And in that ordinary rhythm, something shifts. A presence. A quiet knowing.
The silence becomes full, almost too full to carry. Tears gather gently, then fall all at once as I sit and surrender to Him. The past two years come rushing back, marked by suffering, by hospital rooms and long nights, by cycles of discharge and return. Pain that felt never ending.
Yet here I am.
As this Easter season continues to unfold, I find myself searching for ways to give thanks, to God who has kept me, who has carried me, who has granted me these past four months of health and happiness, free from pain. A gift I continue to not take lightly.
It’s the 24th of April, 2026, I repost a #hopecore video of Andy Cohen speaking with Stephen Colbert, where he said “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There is no escaping that. If you are grateful for your life, you have to be grateful for all of it.” These words found me just days after I was once again in a hospital bed. This time lighter, more merciful than before, but still it stirred something deep within. And as I remembered that Holy Saturday silence, I began to understand it differently.
Silence is never absence.
It is preparation.
Jesus suffered before He rose.
And as one of my favourite gospel songs by Donnie McClurkin reminds me,
“For a saint is just a sinner who fell down
But we couldn't stay there
And got up”
So I make this quiet promise to myself, to remain grateful.
For the joy and the pain,
for the light and the shadow,
for the comfort and the suffering.
Because God is present through it all, moving through every movement, even the ones that feel empty or heavy-handed. That is the truth I will keep returning to.
Again and again,
like breath,
like prayer,
like hope waiting in the dark.