AECI Lent 2026 Reflection: 'Am I In The Picture? A Screen Journey' (Holy Saturday)

AECI Lent 2026 Reflection: 'Am I In The Picture? A Screen Journey'

(With reference to Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Gospel According to St Matthew 1964)

Opening Prayer:

'We pray for the gift of patience.

To stand in the release of 'sacred time'.

To listen in silence and in stillness

For the murmurings of new growth

And fresh direction.

The stars shall fill us with Light

And the breeze will come upon us

And the bare tree will blossom again

In Word and in Spirit'.

Amen

Holy Saturday

'Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.' (Matthew 27: 65-66)

In our grief and mourning for others we can so easily become unsettled and befuddled about time and trajectory.

RECALL: Something of the multifaceted and varied lives of those who have died in recent years.

ASK: How might we embody their hopes and their qualities?

REFLECT: 'Secure the tomb' might seem like an odd instruction. It suggests a darkness, an obscurity or a final act of control, a conclusion.

Release from this temporal world into 'sacred time' may not be so ordered or methodical as Pilate suggests. Consider what is the reach of the 'Divine Light' in our present lives? In our sadness as well as in our joys?