Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

April. 19, 2025

Day 7 of Holy Week Reflections

Holy Saturday

Today is Holy Saturday. Today we pause between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. A pause. An empty space.

There is no Eucharist in the tabernacle. In fact, the tabernacle doors are wide open, and empty. The candle above the tabernacle has been extinguished. There is no Holy Water in the receptacles at the doors of the church. No Mass is celebrated today until the Easter Vigil after dark. Jesus is not here in this holy place, this house of worship, but God is. This is God’s house.

Yesterday, on Good Friday, my husband and I attended the Seven Last Words liturgy at our church. In each of the seven reflections about the scripture passages that represent Jesus’s last words during his Crucifixion, it was repeatedly stated in the reflections of the seven parishioners chosen this year that Jesus had gone to Hell to free the souls there, to conquer sin, and to open the gates of Heaven for all.

We of course know all of this, having learned the Apostles Creed in catechism or in Catholic school, but there is something quite different about listening to those words in a church that is empty of the things that remind us we are in God’s house.

Yesterday, on Good Friday, as per my custom from my childhood, I didn’t watch TV. My mother forbid it when we were growing up. We weren’t supposed to fight with each other, my brothers and I, but there was only so much we could do without school or TV. Good Friday was a day of fasting, only one big meal, and no meat at all. We tried to be quiet with inconsistent success.

So, yesterday, I reread a book I purchased in 2017, Praying the Angelus (Ave Maria Press, 2017) by Jared Dees. He was the keynote speaker at a Catholic schools collaboration day for the diocese where I spent nearly 20 years teaching middle school language arts. 2017 was the year that I switched schools, from my first ever school to my parish school, the school I retired from (several times). It is also the year when I really learned to pray.

Most collaboration days in my experience were long and not as fruitful as perhaps the organizers had anticipated. I almost always wished I was in my classroom teaching instead. But this one was different. Jared Dees told the auditorium full of Catholic school teachers how he became devoted to the tradition of praying the Angelus three times a day, 6:00 AM, 12:00 noon, and 6:00 PM. Many, many Catholics stop what they are doing at those three times each day to pray this ancient prayer, except during the 50 days following Easter Sunday when the Church prays the Regina Caeli instead.

Dees spoke about how adopting this practice changed him, how it changed him as a person, as a worker, as a boss, as a husband, as a father, as a Catholic. Because he was a published author who had written a book about this, I didn’t find this surprising. What was surprising though was that even as a high school theology teacher with a Masters degree from Notre Dame, Dees had never heard of the Angelus until a trip to Rome where he attended Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI, which was followed by the Angelus.

It was when Dees said this in his keynote address that I jerked to attention. Until the day I started teaching middle school English and literature in a Catholic school in 2007, I had never heard of the Angelus either. The first few days of school, I tried to hide the fact that I couldn’t respond as my classroom full of 8th graders recited this Marian prayer, which focuses the prayerful on the mystery of the Incarnation. It is a call and response prayer anchored by three Hail Marys.

In the school handbook was a page of prayers recited throughout the day at my first school: Morning Offering after the students had entered the building, the Angelus at lunch followed by Grace, and the Act of Contrition at the end of the day just before dismissal. I set about memorizing the Angelus, the only one that I hadn’t heard of before. Soon I was responding appropriately and it became a part of my day, but just at noon.

In reading Dees’s book, I also was drawn to a famous painting he mentioned depicting two farmers in the field stopping at noon to say the Angelus. I would love to have a print of this painting to hang in my home office as a reminder to stop my work on the two books I am working on each day at noon. To pause. To allow for some space, an empty space where Jesus might enter.

For almost 20 years I said the Angelus at noon with my students, and I often found myself saying it on my own on weekends. I’m not a morning person so I am not up at 6:00 AM much anymore, now that I am retired. The 6:00 PM praying time is very easy as we are usually settling in for the evening, thinking about dinner. I also say the Angelus right before I go to sleep at night, and often if I am tackling a household chore I’m not fond of, I’ll concentrate on the call and response of the Angelus and the comfort of the Hail Marys.

But, I have found a way to ensure that I say the Angelus every morning. I say it while I am in the shower, regardless of the time. It’s now become such a habit that turning on the water instantly jettisons me into, “The angel of the Lord,” and I let all my thoughts drain away from me like the water in the shower.

This shower-prayer practice started when a teaching colleague’s young daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. It was such a horrible time, worrying about my friend and her daughter, hearing about the treatments which were positively terrifying, and being filled with the anxiety of not knowing if she would survive this health crisis or not. I’d pray for her at night before bed, but I would wake up worried about her and thinking of my friend coping with this terrible situation. That’s when I started saying the Angelus in the shower. As I showered and got ready for school each morning, this was something positive I could do instead of just worrying. With time, I noticed how much peace it brought to me, and it was a great way to start my day.

My dear Scottish cousin Anna, who spent time with us when my mother was so ill and undergoing twelve surgeries in two years, would say to me, sometimes sharply, when I was overwrought with worry over my mother, “Where is your rosary? Pray to the Blessed Mother, ask for her intercession. Our Lady will not let you down.” What better way to do this than with the Angelus. It is now my favorite prayer, my favorite religious devotion, my favorite way to pause from work or worry or whatever. Just a brief pause in my day, an empty space filled with prayer and peace.

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy Word.”

Blessed Virgin Mary, pray for us.