As far as I was from you, so far did my sermon travel on pilgrimage: but pray, brethren, that as God restored me to you, so He may deign to restore and give back to me my sermon also. You have heard the evangelist saying (Matt. 28): 'In the evening of the sabbath,' he says, 'which dawns toward the first day of the week.' What does human sense here understand? What does human wisdom here perceive? An evening that dawns. Evening ends the day, it does not begin it, nor does it give birth to light, but to darkness; yet here the Author of the elements changes the turns of the elements, that in the resurrection of the Lord you may perceive all divine, nothing human. In short, when Christ rose again, the evening dawns for the faithful, the day grows dark for the unbelieving; for the disciples night is changed into day, for the Jews the day is turned and changed into night.
'From the sixth hour,' it says, 'there was darkness over the whole earth until the ninth hour' (Luke 23), so that the very midday brightness, which is total, was darkened, and that what is written might be fulfilled: 'The sun shall set upon him at midday' (Amos 8); it shall set for them, that is, for the Jews; but for us: 'The night shall be lit up like the day' (Ps. 138). Because evening ever inclines toward deep darkness, He then stretched it all out and raised it into light for Christ, and by full splendour filled all the hearts of mortals from the depths below when Christ rose again. The evening of the sabbath. Because the sabbath is illumined through Christ, it is not abolished. For He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil (Matt. 5).
It is illumined, that it may shine on the Lord's day, and be made bright in the Church, that which in the synagogue was obscured by the Jews who darkened it. 'Mary Magdalene came, and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre.' Women go before the apostles to the ministry, women who follow men in sex, and follow the disciples in order: yet they do not on this account make the apostles more sluggish, women who bring to the Lord's sepulchre not the forms of women, but the type of the Churches. Mary, and Mary, so the one 'other' as she herself, she herself as the other: O, the other Mary is herself, Mary the mother of Christ: one name is doubled into two women, because here the Church, coming from two peoples, is figured as one from two peoples, that is, from the Gentiles and the Jews, because the first are last and the last first (Matt. 20).
Mary came to the sepulchre, she came to the womb of the resurrection, she came to the birth of life, that Christ might again be born from the sepulchre unto faith, He who had been begotten of the womb according to the flesh; and that the closed sepulchre might restore to eternal life Him whom enclosed virginity had brought forth to the present life. It is a mark of divinity to have left the virgin closed after the birth; it is a mark of divinity to have gone forth from the closed sepulchre with His body. Mary and Mary came, that they might see the sepulchre; you see that they came, not that they might behold the Lord, but the sepulchre; nor did they seek among the dead Him who was now living, they who believed the Lord had already risen again. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and coming near he rolled back the stone.
He rolled back the stone, not to provide an exit for the Lord going forth, but to show that the Lord had already risen again for the world; to give faith to His fellow-servants for believing, not to furnish help to the Lord for rising again. He rolled back the stone. It is rolled back to faith, which had been rolled on to unbelief.
He rolled back the stone, that the same might be the title of life which had received the guardian of death. Pray, brethren, that now an angel may descend and roll away all the hardness of our heart, may open the closed things of our senses, and may witness, even out of our minds, that Christ has risen again; because as that heart is heaven in which Christ lives and reigns, so that breast is a sepulchre in which Christ is still held dead and buried. Let the death of Christ be believed both to have been and to have passed over: Christ as man suffered, died, and was buried; as God He is, lives, reigns, remains, endures. Hear the Apostle saying: 'Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now henceforth we know Him so no more' (2 Cor. 5). And:
'In that He died, He died unto sin once; but in that He lives, He lives unto God' (Rom. 6); that is, He lives as God. 'And coming near he rolled back the stone, and was sitting upon it.' He was sitting to teach the resurrection, not to relieve weariness. The heavenly nature knows no weariness, is ignorant of toil: but the stone was made a vessel for the angel's sitting, a chair of heavenly teaching, a school of life, because for the Jews it had been set at the door of death, for the service of the ash-heap, for a mournful silence. 'His appearance,' it says, 'was like lightning, but his garments like snow.' The brightness of his countenance is distinguished from the whiteness of his garments, and his face is compared to lightning, the garment of the angel to snow, because lightning is from heaven, snow from earth. Hear the prophet saying:
'Praise the Lord from the earth, fire, hail, snow' (Ps. 148). In the face of the angel, therefore, the brightness of the heavenly nature is preserved; but in the garment is figured the grace of human fellowship, and the appearance of the conversing angel is tempered, so that fleshly eyes might bear the gentle brightness of the garments also, and might tremble at the messenger from the splendour of his countenance, and might reverence its Author. 'But for fear of him the guards were terrified.' Why were they terrified? Because they were keeping watch out of zeal for cruelty, not out of the obedience of piety. He who is destroyed by conscience and driven by guilt cannot stand. Hence it is that the angel strikes down the impious, but addresses and comforts the pious. 'Fear not ye.' That is, let those fear; let the seekers not fear, let the persecutors fear.
'Fear not ye, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified; He is not here.' That is: I came to instruct you, not to release Him, who is both the Maker of things and His own Raiser. 'He is not here, for He is risen, as He said.' You see that the angel came, that as a servant he might affirm by deeds what the Lord had foretold by words; and that he might teach that the power of dying and of living lay with Him who before His death had foretold His resurrection: for surely He who was able to know was also able to guard against it, but because He was able to conquer, He scorned to avoid it, since the glory of the One rising buried the wrong done to the One dying.
Concerning what follows, brethren, we shall treat in the following sermon, because the weariness of the journey, still fresh, has forbidden us to prolong and extend the sermon.