From: Matthew 28:8-15

Jesus Appears To The Women

[8] So they (Mary Magdalene and the other Mary) departed quickly from the
tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell His disciples. [9] And behold, Jesus
met them and said, “Hail!” And they came up and took hold of His feet and wor-
shipped Him. [10] Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell My
brethren to go to Galilee; and there they will see Me.”

The Soldiers Are Bribed

[11] While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told
the chief priests all that had taken place. [12] And when they had assembled with
the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sum of money to the soldiers [13] and
said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were
asleep.’ [14] And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep
you out of trouble.” [15] So they took the money and did as they were directed;
and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.

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Commentary:

1-15. The resurrection of Jesus, which happened in the early hours of the Sunday
morning, is a fact which all the evangelist state clearly and unequivocally. Some
holy women discover to their surprise that the tomb is open. On entering the hall
(cf. Mark 16:5-6), they see an angel who says to them, “He is not here; for He
has risen, as He said.” The guards who were on duty when the angel rolled back
the stone go to the city and report what has happened to the chief priests. These,
because of the urgency of the matter, decide to bribe the guards; they give them
a considerable sum of money on condition that they spread the word that His dis-
ciples came at night and stole the body of Jesus when they were asleep. “Wret-
ched craftiness,” says St. Augustine, “do you give us witnesses who were asleep?
It is you who are really asleep if this is the only kind of explanation you have to of-
fer!” (”Ennarationes in Psalmos”, 63, 15). The Apostles, who a couple of days be-
fore fled in fear, will, now that they have seen Him and have eaten and drunk with
Him, become tireless preachers of this great event: “This Jesus, they will say,
“God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses” (Acts 2:32).

Just as He foretold He would go up to Jerusalem and be delivered to the leaders
of the Jews and put to death, He also prophesied that He would rise from the
dead (Matthew 20:17-19; Mark 10:32-34; Luke 18:31-34). By His resurrection He
completes the sign He promised to give unbelievers to show His divinity (Matthew
12:40).

The resurrection of Christ is one of the basic dogmas of the Catholic faith. In fact,
St. Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and
your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14); and, to prove his assertion that Christ
rose, he tells us “that He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then He
appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still
alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all
the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me” (1
Corinthians 15:5-8). The creed states that Jesus rose from the dead on the third
day (”Nicene Creed”), by His own power (Ninth Council of Toledo, “De Redemp-
tione Creed”), by a true resurrection of the flesh (”Creed” of St. Leo IX), reuniting
His soul with His body (Innocent III, “Eius Exemplo”), and that this fact of the
resurrection is historically proven and provable (”Lamentabili”, 36).

“By the word ‘resurrection’ we are not merely to understand that Christ was
raised from the dead...but that He rose by His own power and virtue, a singular
prerogative peculiar to Him alone. Our Lord confirmed this by the divine testimo-
ny of His own mouth when He said: ‘I lay down My life, that I may take it again
....I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again’ (John 10:17-
18). To the Jews He also said, in corroboration of His doctrine” ‘Destroy this tem-
ple, and in three days I will raise it up’ (John 2:19-20) [...]. We sometimes, it is
true, read in Scripture that He was raised by the Father (cf. Acts 2:24; Romans
8:11); but this refers to Him as man, just as those passages on the other hand,
which say that He rose by His own power, related to Him as God” (”St. Pius V
Catechism”, I, 6, 8).

Christ’s resurrection was not a return to His previous earthly existence; it was a
“glorious” resurrection, that is to say, attaining the full development of human life
—immortal, freed from all limitations of space and time. As a result of the resur-
rection, Christ’s body now shares in the glory which His soul had from the begin-
ning. Here lies the unique nature of the historical fact of the resurrection. He
could not be seen by anyone but only by those to whom He granted that grace,
to enable them to be witnesses of this resurrection, and to enable others to be-
lieve in Him by accepting the testimony of the seers.

Christ’s resurrection was something necessary for the completion of the work of
our Redemption. For, Jesus Christ through His death freed us from sins; but by
His resurrection He restored us all that we had lost through sin and, moreover,
opened for us the gates of eternal life (cf. Romans 4:25). Also, the fact that He
rose from the dead by His own power is a definitive proof that He is the Son of
God, and therefore His resurrection fully confirms our faith in His divinity.

The resurrection of Christ, as has been pointed out, is the most sublime truth of
our faith. That is why St. Augustine exclaims: “It is no great thing to believe that
Christ died; for this is something that is also believed by pagans and Jews and by
all the wicked: everyone believes that He died. The Christians’ faith is in Christ’s
resurrection; that is what we hold to be a great thing—to believe that He rose”
(”Enarrationes in Psalmos”, 120).

The mystery of the Redemption wrought by Christ, which embraces His death and
resurrection, is applied to every man and woman through Baptism and the other
sacraments, by means of which the believer is as it were immersed in Christ and
in His death, that is to say, in a mystical way he becomes part of Christ, he dies
and rises with Christ: “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism unto death,
so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might
walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

An ardent desire to seek the things of God and an interior taste for the things that
are above (cf. Colossians 3:1-3) are signs of our resurrection with Christ.

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.

Readings at Mass

First reading

Acts 2:14,22-33 ©

On the day of Pentecost Peter stood up with the Eleven and addressed the crowd in a loud voice: ‘Men of Israel, listen to what I am going to say: Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God by the miracles and portents and signs that God worked through him when he was among you, as you all know. This man, who was put into your power by the deliberate intention and foreknowledge of God, you took and had crucified by men outside the Law. You killed him, but God raised him to life, freeing him from the pangs of Hades; for it was impossible for him to be held in its power since, as David says of him:

I saw the Lord before me always,

for with him at my right hand nothing can shake me.

So my heart was glad

and my tongue cried out with joy;

my body, too, will rest in the hope

that you will not abandon my soul to Hades

nor allow your holy one to experience corruption.

You have made known the way of life to me,

you will fill me with gladness through your presence.

‘Brothers, no one can deny that the patriarch David himself is dead and buried: his tomb is still with us. But since he was a prophet, and knew that God had sworn him an oath to make one of his descendants succeed him on the throne, what he foresaw and spoke about was the resurrection of the Christ: he is the one who was not abandoned to Hades, and whose body did not experience corruption. God raised this man Jesus to life, and all of us are witnesses to that. Now raised to the heights by God’s right hand, he has received from the Father the Holy Spirit, who was promised, and what you see and hear is the outpouring of that Spirit.’

Psalm

Psalm 15:1-2,5,7-11 ©