A full and sufficient token of perfect devotion is it, that at the time of the passion the whole creation suffers together with its Creator. What flesh did not tremble when the earth trembled, what mind did not grow numb, what understanding did not fail, when the sun set before its time and the light fled away? In short, brethren, our own inward parts then sank down, our sense died together with Him, our speech was buried together with its Author, that it might now be raised again unto His whole glory. This was the cause of my silence, this was the devout postponement of my debt.
Nor is it any wonder, brethren, if my sermon, providently, with all the obedience of affection, followed its Bestower even unto the nether regions, because without Him I had nothing to render to you, such and so great creditors. But if any greedy and eager exactor complains of the slowness of payment, let him cease to bring against us the reproach of time, because my rich Lord increases and repays the manifold interest of that very loan. Let the generous kindness of the Gospel reading now absolve us, whom the necessity of duty has only led and bound to this debt. 'In the evening of the sabbath,' it says, 'which dawns toward the first day of the week.' When the Lord rose again, not only was the law of human nature converted, but the very order of creation was signally changed.
'The evening of the sabbath which dawns.' Behold, when the Lord rises, the evening does not grow dark, but grows bright; and there becomes a beginning of light, that which was wont to be the beginning of night. 'The evening of the sabbath which dawns toward the first day of the week' (Matt. 28). Just as mortality is transferred into immortality, corruption into incorruption, flesh into God, so darkness is transferred into light; that the night itself may rejoice not to have thus perished, but to have been changed, which failed rather by obscurity than by time, which the more happily lost the intervals, the turn of its servitude, that it might flow forth and burst into the liberty of perpetual light, as the prophet says: 'And night shall be my illumination in my delights' (Ps. 138). 'The evening which dawns toward the first day of the week.'
The sabbath rejoices to be made a second thing, which by the command of the law was growing numb in idleness; and it is wondrously roused into the primacy of the Lord's day, into the works of divine power, which the inertia of Jewish observance was rendering estranged from saving virtue, since the Lord said: 'Is it not lawful on the sabbath to grant care to the sick, help to the afflicted, sight to the blind, life to the dead?' (Luke 6). And by so interpreting the sabbath day, deputed by God to the pursuits of the holy law, it had wretchedly consigned it only to the servitude of the belly. 'In the evening of the sabbath, which dawns toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came, and the other Mary.' One came in name, who now is read as another in a different person. Mary came, and the other Mary.
And this, that in the two the unity of the name might figure something, and that the diversity of persons might disclose the changed woman. For 'she came,' not 'they came,' and when he says 'other,' by a mystic utterance he designates the same one in both, so as to show that the one had come before faith, and the other was to return after faith. The woman came, but Mary returns; she came who brought in death, she returns who bore life; she came, an Eve, who led to the nether regions, she returns who received Christ back from the nether regions. Mary came, and the other Mary. Why? To see the sepulchre, and not to seek Christ:
only to see the sepulchre, the title of her own guilt, the sad document of her crime, of her presumption with the devil, the deadly bargain of her gain, that from thence she might recover faith, whence she was enduring the perpetual reproach of her transgression. And behold, a great earthquake occurred. If the earth so trembled when the Lord of its own rises unto pardon, how shall it tremble when He shall rise for the punishment of the guilty, as the prophet says: 'The earth trembled and was still, when God arose in judgment' (Ps. 75)? And she who could not bear the presence of a fellow-servant, that is, of an angel, how shall she bear God as Judge? Behold, by the same lines by which human salvation had perished, it is repaired. The first woman unto unbelief is the first procured unto faith;
the first runs to the destroyer of death, she who first had run to the author of death: the first hears from the angel, she who first had conversed with the devil. An angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and coming near he rolled back the stone, and was sitting upon it. Not that he might confer the resurrection by such a work, but that he might betray it, as the Lord says: 'I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again' (John 10). He opens to us what was closed, he unseals to us what was hidden, and he does not lead forth to the light his own Author, who was no longer in the sepulchre; but his fellow-servants, who were placed in the darkness of doubt, he leads to the faith of the resurrection; He Himself testifying, when He says: 'He is not here, He is risen.' He rolled back the stone, and was sitting upon it.
Why not 'rolled,' but 'rolled back'? That the angel might roll back unto faith and salvation the stone which the treachery of the Pharisees had willed unto offence and scandal, as the prophet says: 'Behold, I lay in Sion a stone of offence and a rock of scandal' (Isa. 8, 28; Rom. 9). Therefore the stone is rolled back, that it might roll away death, it which, rolled on, had shut in life, as the Scripture says: 'You shall see your life hanging before your eyes, and you shall not believe' (Deut. 28). And he was sitting upon it, not refreshing weariness, but thus showing himself to be the president of the sacred and life-giving sepulchre; and the heavenly minister was declaring by such a token of his sitting that death had been destroyed:
and that He is God who suffered, God who was received within the straits of our body, God whom, thus sitting on high in heavenly guise, the herald was testifying. And what more, brethren? He sits, because the angel never departs from that so venerable a sepulchre. 'But for fear of him the guards were terrified, and became as dead men.' Those whom terror lays low as guilty, it soon recurs to the conscious. Thus, thus, when the innocent rise again, terror and death shall possess the unjust and the impious. 'And his appearance was like lightning, and his garments like snow.' What does a garment do, where there is no nakedness? What need of covering, where there is no necessity of concealing? But the angel, brethren, prefigures our garb, our form,
our likeness, in the resurrection thus prefiguring, where man is restored by the very brightness of his own body, as the Lord says: 'Then shall the just shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father' (Matt. 13). 'And answering, the angel said to the women: Fear not ye, for I know that you seek Jesus, who was crucified.' They were still seeking Him crucified and dead, they whose faith the cruel storm of the passion had troubled, and the weight of temptation had so bent them down, that they still sought the Lord of heaven in the sepulchre. 'He is not here.' According to that which existed in a place; but He is here, through this, that He is everywhere, and is not shut in by the capacity of a place. 'Come, see the place where the Lord was laid.'
The angel calls the women to see, that the place of the sacred body might cleanse the eyes which, with the devil closing them, the sight of the forbidden tree had stained. They enter the sepulchre, that, buried together with the Lord, they might rise again wholly unto the salvation of faith. 'For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be so also of His resurrection' (Rom. 6). 'Going, tell His disciples.' Return to the man, O woman now healed, and persuade to faith, you who had persuaded to unbelief; report to the man the token of the Lord's resurrection, to whom before you brought the counsel of temptation and of ruin.