This sermon is in three very ancient codices inscribed with the name of Saint Maximus. Of these the first is of the abbey of Saint Dalmatius, the other is the third Turin sermon. There is no reason why I should think I ought to depart from them. This same sermon was wretchedly interpolated by that Semi-Pelagian writer, whoever he was, whom the Benedictine monks rightly refute in their admonition to Sermon 211 of the appendix to volume V of the works of Saint Augustine. And these indeed suspect him to have been Faustus of Riez; whether truly or otherwise, I do not trouble myself.
Let us exult in the Lord, brethren, in this present solemnity which the Lord has made, on which our Lord Jesus Christ, rich with the spoils of hell and the triumphant conqueror of death, was restored to the world from the darkness of the sepulcher which Jewish impiety had blocked up. For while He pursues death even unto the nether regions, He deigned to recall unto the everlasting joys of paradise the man whom He had created and redeemed. Even unto the nether regions He pursued death, and made that same death captive in its own kingdom more gloriously, and triumphed over it. Then were opened those dark inner chambers of the nether world. Eternal night marveled at what it had never seen—the heavenly light. Whence the prophet himself could say: 'O death, I will be thy death;
I will be thy bite, O hell!' (Hos. 13:14). For Him whom it thought to be dead, it was forced to release, and it experienced Him as the liberator of those whom it already held in its nets; and in this most sacred festival of the resurrection, when the Lord raised Himself, many bodies of the saints were raised and lived again, and entered into the holy city. For the Savior on this very day, when He rose, raised up His own sacrificial offerings, and as often as the festival of the resurrection is celebrated, so often do we believe the saints also to rise. Our Savior, therefore, rose again also in the mortal flesh which He had assumed from His virgin Mother, and which hung upon the tree for our salvation.
From that sepulcher He recalled to new life the body which had been laid in the sepulcher. The same body entered to His disciples through closed doors. You have nothing more, therefore, O pagan, that you might see Christ to have been crucified; that you might object that He feared to die. Behold, He whom you say feared to die, whom you see to have been crucified, by His own power came forth alive from that sepulcher which He had willed to be guarded. Behold, He has the same flesh, the same bones. Hear Him saying to His own disciples: 'Handle and see, that a spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see me to have' (Luke 24:39). He showed His flesh and bones, that no one might doubt any longer that the same One came forth alive from the tomb who died fixed with nails upon the tree.
'Handle,' He said, 'and see.' Handle indeed my body with your hand, and see me and my wounds. Handle with your hand and see by faith, that there is in me both the reality of that body which hung upon the cross and was laid dead in the sepulcher, and the property of the Godhead by which I raised myself up dead and laid in the sepulcher. And in truth Thomas, while he examined the wounds of the Lord's body and handled the flesh, recognized the true body in Christ Himself. The most blessed apostle therefore saw and handled; what he then did profited all. For when he exercised his solicitude upon the body of Christ, he confirmed the faith of all.
But the same body, which was fixed upon the tree for all, now reigns in heaven at the right hand of His Father. And in truth it was fitting that that true substance of body and soul should exult forever in the heavens together with Christ, which, trampling these earthly hindrances, had served Him alone on earth. Here it ends.