In 2010, while venerating the Shroud of Turin, Pope Benedict XVI offered a meditation on the powerful silence of that mysterious winding-sheet, calling it an “icon of Holy Saturday…the day when God remains hidden.” The pope went on to note that “our epoch has become increasingly a Holy Saturday: this day’s darkness challenges all who are wondering about life, and it challenges us believers in particular. We too have something to do with this darkness.”

Brittany Holberg, who has spent 27 years on Texas’ death row, understands the silence and darkness of Holy Saturday. Having experienced a profound conversion some years ago, Brittany began writing brief meditations on her experience of Christ’s presence in the most unlikely, most inhospitable of places: prison.

In May, Catholic Prison Ministries Coalition will publish a collection of Brittany’s meditations, Flowers in the Garden of Mercy, from which the following is taken. In this excerpt, Brittany expresses the sorrow and patience of St Mary Magdalene on Holy Saturday, a woman whose hope would be fulfilled the following morning at a tomb that tried and failed to contain the mercy of God.

You are gone, my Lord.

Your pierced and beaten body enclosed in a tomb after the horrors inflicted. After the horrors we all witnessed.

You had told us but we did not understand. And now we sit in stunned silence. Some are filled with regret at what they did not do. Others are ashamed of what they did do, fleeing in fear after your arrest. Others are simply numb, stunned into silence. How could all of this have happened?

I stood there and watched it all. I knew it would be more than my heart could bear but I needed you to know, my Lord, that I was there. Now I sit in silence, replaying every moment.

Oh precious Lord, come back to me. I have questions, yes, so many questions—but most of all I long to be in your presence again. No one has ever understood me the way you do. No one has ever loved me the way you do, and I cannot imagine going on without you.

On this strangely quiet day I take strength from your words, “Where two or three are gathered in my name…” I find certainty in the undeniable change you brought about in me and in my friends. We met something exceptional—we met You. You taught us that death does not have the final say.

That is why we will wait, Lord. We will wait for you.

What is striking about Brittany’s meditation is its repeated use of we. Holy Saturday—indeed, the entirety of the Church’s life—is a companionship. We support each other in times of darkness, in our Holy Saturdays when it seems God is hidden. And, like St. Mary Magdalene, we run to share with others our Easter joy in the Risen Lord.

As he concluded his remarks on the Shroud, Pope Benedict noted the large stain near Christ’s rib, “made by the blood and water that flowed copiously from a great wound inflicted by the tip of a Roman spear. That blood and that water speak of life,” Benedict said. “It is like a spring that murmurs in the silence, and we can hear it, we can listen to it in the silence of Holy Saturday.”

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Reflection written by Brittany Holberg, Texas Death Row, with commentary by Joshua Stancil who was also incarcerated for 18 years. Joshua is currently the Executive Director of Living with Convictions and is Catholic Prison Ministries Coalition’s Creative Content Manager.