The Sovereign Love of God

T he P assion of C hrist

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Holy Saturday April 3, 2021

Holy Week recalls the events of our Lord’s suffering and death. We recall his triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, his giving of the commandments on Maundy Thursday, his crucifixion and burial on Good Friday, and the solemn vigil of Saturday night before Easter Sunday.

TODAY’S THEME The Burial of Jesus, John 19.38-42

Joseph of Arimathea, a believer and one waiting for the Kingdom, got permission from Pilate to bury Jesus’s dead body, and made the arrangements with Nicodemus. These two, although members of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council, did not consent with the leaders’ decision to crucify Jesus, but took about seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes and prepared our Lord’s body for burial. They would lay Jesus’s body in a borrowed tomb, the final act of humiliation in the crucifixion spectacle. As the Creed declares, Jesus died, and his body was buried in the tomb.

Daily Devotional Guide

Preparing Our Hearts

Invocation: Our Prayer of Acclamation Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for his merits who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

~ 1637 Scottish Prayer Book , attributed to Laud and Cosin, BEC, No. 43 (Geffen, p. 82)