The Time of Apparent Meaninglessness

The Resurrection at Dawn

Dwelling in the Interval

Holy Saturday occupies, within the Paschal narrative, a singular and often underestimated place: it is the time of the interval. Action has ceased, the promise has not yet become intelligible, and the meaning of events remains obscured. The visible drama of Friday has ended, yet the transforming clarity of Sunday has not arrived. There is only silence.

This day therefore symbolizes the human space between an event and its interpretation — the moment in which lived experience appears to lack intelligible meaning. Hope does not entirely disappear, but it loses its empirical supports. The memory of the promise remains, while present reality seems to contradict it.

Anthropologically, Saturday represents one of the most demanding experiences of the human condition: the time of apparent non-meaning. It is not the acute pain of crisis that most destabilizes human beings, but the absence of explanation after it. When suffering has not yet been integrated into a meaningful narrative, an interior suspension emerges.

Within teams and organizations, this same phenomenon appears in the period following major crises or structural transformations. It is the phase in which:

• results have not yet become visible;

• decisions made have not produced objective confirmation;

• doubts and divergent interpretations arise;

• the collective narrative remains incomplete, unable to provide psychological closure.

It is the moment when indicators fail to validate the effort invested and motivation can rely neither on a stable past nor on a proven future. The team stands at a threshold: it has advanced too far to return, yet cannot clearly see where it has arrived.

In this context, leadership assumes a particularly mature and rare form. It no longer consists in guiding through evidence of success or urgency of crisis, but in sustaining meaning when evidence is absent. The leader becomes the guardian of narrative continuity, preserving the intelligibility of the journey while external signs remain ambiguous.

This attitude is neither naïve optimism nor denial of reality. It is a rational hope — grounded not in immediate results, but in the coherence of the path taken, the trust previously built, and fidelity to the principles that guided earlier decisions. It is a hope that thinks before it feels, and remains before it fully understands.

Extreme Teamness reveals here a frequently neglected dimension: the deepest cohesion is tested not only in visible adversity but in the interpretive void that follows it. Teams fragment less because of crisis itself than because of the silence that comes afterward, when meaning cannot yet be demonstrated.

Saturday teaches that authentic leadership includes the capacity to inhabit the interval — to remain steadfast when the story seems interrupted. Sustaining presence, continuity, and trust in this liminal time constitutes one of the highest expressions of human authority: the authority that keeps alive the possibility of meaning even before it becomes visible.

Reference: Matthew 28:1–10

by Asfene G. Macciantelli

The Author of EXTREME TEAMNESS — The Culture of Magnanimous Cohesion