Holy Saturday, April 19, 2025

Luke 24, 1–12

At daybreak on the first day of the week the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb; but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were puzzling over this, behold, two men in dazzling garments appeared to them. They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. They said to them, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day.” And they remembered his words. Then they returned from the tomb and announced all these things to the eleven and to all the others. The women were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James; the others who accompanied them also told this to the apostles, but their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, bent down, and saw the burial cloths alone; then he went home amazed at what had happened.

“Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised.”  Perhaps rephrasing the translation would help us to appreciate the meaning of the angels: “the living one among corpses”.  The question the angels ask seems odd.  The women were going to the last place the Body of Jesus had been seen.  They went with honorable intentions, as well.  The question has the tone of a rebuke, which hardly seems appropriate.  But by asking this question, the angels make clear that they know the Lord is risen, as though to say, Of course Christ is risen.  You, who are mortals, do not see this and must be convinced of it, but we, who are angels, know that he lives and tell this to you.  “He has been raised.”  That is, from the grave in the depths of the earth to the upper regions where there is life and light.  There is also the sense that a body is buried on its back in a posture that otherwise suggests sleep.  But when a sleeping person wakes up, that person rises from the bed.  This phrase can also be understood in that the soul of Jesus “descended” to the realm of the dead and has re-emerged from it into the world of the living.  “He has been raised” is in the passive voice, meaning that someone raised him, and that would be his Father in heaven.  Elsewhere, however, we hear of Jesus rising from the dead in the active voice: “Jesus died and rose again” (1 Thessalonians 4, 13).  The work of the Resurrection is the work of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, so perfect is their union.

“He is not here, but he has been raised.”  Where is “here”?  It is this world with all its entanglements and traps for the soul.  Jesus has been raised out of it and with his glorified Body exists in a different way in relation to it — he can pass through locked doors, he can take on other appearances so that even those who know him do not recognize him.  And yet he can eat real food; he has flesh and bones and is not like a ghost: “See my hands and feet, that it is I myself. Handle, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have” (Luke 24, 39).  And so shall it be for us on the Last Day when Jesus comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

“But their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them.”  The women themselves may not have known what to make of what the angels told them and could not relate a coherent report to the Apostles.  But even if they did, the Apostles could not have been able to absorb the news.  At least St. John, of them all, had stood beneath the Cross and seen their Lord die on it and then his side pierced by a guard’s lance.  Evidently they knew that he had been buried and they knew the location of the tomb.  He was dead.  Shock and grief held them in thrall.  Except for Saints Peter and John.

“Peter got up and ran to the tomb, bent down, and saw the burial cloths alone; then he went home amazed at what had happened.”  St. Luke speaks only of St, Peter here.  John, in his own Gospel, will related that he ran with Peter and even reached the tomb before he did.  We see in Peter’s running his urgent, even desperate, desire to see Jesus again and to beg his forgiveness for his denials of him.  He “bent down” when he arrived at the tomb, for the tomb had been cut into a rock and had a little courtyard before the entrance reached by a few steps.  Peter saw their Lord die burial cloths “alone”, that is, not wrapped around the Body of Jesus.  And this fact, that they had been left behind, left him “amazed”.  Peter saw only two possibilities: either the Body of Jesus had been removed from the tomb or he had risen from the dead.  But if it had been removed, many people would have known about it because the work of moving the massive stone that sealed the tomb would have entailed several workmen as well as giant levers and other tools.  And if the Body had been removed from the tomb, it would still be wrapped in its burial cloths.  There would have been no need to remove them.  This left the alternative explanation, that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead.