Just complete, total darkness, and a hundred people breathing quietly inside it.

Then one flame 🌸

Passed from hand to hand until the whole space slowly began to glow again. I've witnessed this every year of my adult life and it has never once become ordinary. The Exsultet rising through the dark — Lumen Christi — and something in the throat tightening involuntarily.

Holy Saturday asks something specific of you. It asks you to occupy the in-between honestly. To not rush forward into resurrection before you've genuinely sat with what preceded it ✝️ The Church designed that night with extraordinary wisdom. You cannot appreciate the dawn if you skipped the darkness entirely.

"Do not be afraid" — the angel's first words at the empty tomb. Not congratulations. Not celebration. Just that. Do not be afraid 🌿 Because apparently the most natural response to something entirely new is terror, and God already knew that.

I carried that phrase home with me and it's been sitting somewhere central ever since