Since holy Matthew has already salutarily made known to us what he had learned concerning the Lord's resurrection, today let us hear what blessed Mark also relates. 'And when the sabbath was past,' he says, 'Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, that coming they might anoint Jesus' (Mark 16). The women in this place run about with feminine devotion, who brought ointments to the sepulchre not as to a living One for faith, but as to a dead One, and prepare the services of mourning as to one buried, not the joys of divine triumphs as to one rising again. Christ received death, that death might die; Christ, while He is slain, slew that which was slaying all.
Christ entered the sepulchre, about to lay open hell. Therefore, the law of Tartarus being loosed, and the prison of hell destroyed, and the very empire of death slain, Christ is now not to be anointed as one dead, but to be adored as a conqueror. The women pass the night, keep watch, spend sleepless hours, penetrate the dark places of the breaking dawn: whence also they are seen to endure the doubtful light of the heart no less than that of the body. 'And very early,' he says, 'on the first day of the week, they come to the tomb, the sun being now risen.' If 'very early,' how is the sun already risen? Does the evangelist thus not know what he says? The evangelist knows what he says, but he who has not learned knows not what he hears; this is not a report of error, it is of truth: nor does it suffer any lapse of human speech, but heavenly opens the truth of the deed done. He had said:
'From the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness' (Mark 15); therefore the sun, which had withdrawn out of season to suffer with the Lord, ran forth with brightness before its time when the Lord rose again: and that which, in order to die together with its Author, had put to death its own noonday brightness, in order to rise again with its Author, the darkness being overcome, broke forth before the dawn. 'Very early.' Because then the sun was early abroad, that it might make morning; and that which had fled before the night, now itself forestalls the night, about to put it to flight, that it might give back to the light for us the hours which the terror of the Lord's Passion had invaded. 'They said,' he says, 'to one another: Who shall roll away for us the stone from the door of the tomb?' From the door of the tomb, or of the heart? from the sepulchre, or from the eyes?
O women, your breast is barred, your eyes are shut; and therefore you do not see the glory of the opened tomb. Pour out oil, not upon the Lord's body, but upon the lamp of your heart, if you desire to see, so that by the light of faith there may lie open what is closed in the darkness of unbelief. 'And looking up,' it says, 'they saw the stone rolled back, for it was exceeding great.' Truly great, and exceeding great, and now greater by merit than by shape, since it sufficed to close and cover the body of the Creator of the world. 'And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed with a white robe.' They entered the tomb, that being buried together with Christ, they might rise again with Christ out of the tomb, and that saying of the Apostle might be fulfilled:
'You are buried together with him in baptism, in which also you rose again' (Col. 2). Let her behold a young man, that they might discern the age of our resurrection; they see a young man, because the resurrection knows no old age, nor does eternal perfection admit the changes of the ages. Where man knows not birth, he knows not death; and where he knows neither to be born nor to die, there he admits no loss of years, nor has need of increase. They see a young man sitting on the right side, because the resurrection receives nothing sinister. 'The ways that are on the right hand,' it says, 'the Lord knoweth' (Prov. 4, according to the LXX). And, 'Then shall he set the just on his right hand' (Matt. 25, according to the LXX). Pray, brethren, that we too may die to our vices, may be buried to the pomps of time, that we may rise in Christ unto eternity, and being set on the right hand may deserve to hear:
'Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world' (Matt. 25). 'Clothed with a white robe.' That robe is not of mortal fleece, but of living virtue; shining with heavenly light, not with an earthly hue; and bright by the gift of the Creator, not by the craft of the fuller, as the Prophet says: 'Clothed with light as with a garment' (Ps. 103), and of the just: 'Then shall the just shine as the sun' (Matt. 13). Earthly men are veiled with earthly garments; and therefore, as they gleam in their newness, so they grow foul with age; but the heavenly are wrapped in the mantle of heavenly light, and being lifted above earthly squalor, are never defiled by age, nor darkened by any filth;
but the garments which the resurrection has once bestowed are clothed with perpetual light. But they, going out from the tomb, fled; for trembling and fear had seized them. An angel sits in the tomb, yet the women flee from the tomb; because he trusts in his heavenly substance, while they are troubled by their earthly condition. He who cannot die knows not how to fear the sepulchre; but the women both tremble at the deed, and, as yet mortal, dread the sepulchre in mortal fashion. Hence it is that they say nothing to anyone. 'And they said nothing to any man.' Because to women it is given to hear, not to speak; to learn, not to teach, as the Apostle says: 'Let women keep silence in the church' (1 Cor. 14).
Finally, this same Mary afterwards both goes and announces, but now bearing not a woman but the Church, that there, as a woman, she might keep silence, and here, as the Church, she might proclaim and speak. 'After these things,' it says, 'he was shown to two of them as they walked.' Why not to three, why not to four, but to two? Because to two peoples, that is, to the Gentiles and the Jews, the faith of the resurrection is here shown as to be preached; whence, as we have said, it is proved in the two women, as in the two disciples, that one Church is figured. 'He was shown in another form.'
Let no one think that Christ by his resurrection changed the likeness of his own countenance, so that he who was himself in the wound should be another in the face; but the likeness is changed, while from mortal he is made immortal, and from corruptible incorruptible, so that this is to have changed the substance, not to have changed the person, and to have gained the glory of the countenance, not to have lost the recognition of the countenance. And lest a hasty discourse either shun or fly past the questions, what follows we shall make known in the next sermon, the Lord revealing it.