Now that Lent has begun I offer a few brief considerations from Our Savior’s passion, death, and burial, that anticipate Easter.
First, consider the two disciples on their heavy walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a neighboring city. Their hearts are so despondent, maybe even in despair, after leaving the holy city following upon the death of their Lord and Master. They had, it seems, lost their hope in Him whom they had thought “would redeem Israel.” One of the two, tradition has it, was Cleophas, the husband of Mary, the mother of the Apostles, Simon, James, and Jude. She was one of the two other Marys who stood by Our Lady beneath the Cross. It was the third day after the crucifixion, a Sunday.
And Jesus, whom they did not yet recognize, explained to the two dejected disciples whom He had joined on the road: “‘Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory?’ And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him” (Luke 24: 17 & 25-27).
As He hung dying on the Cross, Our Lord proclaimed that now, with His death, all things were “consummated.” Mankind had been redeemed, the gates of heaven would be opened forever for the just.
With hardened hearts the chief priests left Calvary, after seeing that the Christ was dead and noting where He was buried, and, ignoring the Sabbath rest, they went to Pilate ever so politely (hypocrites that they were) to ask for soldiers to guard the tomb, supposedly, as they told him, in order to prevent His disciples from stealing away the body. These evil leaders, who ought to have championed Jesus as Lord and King, called Him “a seducer” in petitioning Pilate for the guards. Pilate had had enough by then. He was afraid, no doubt, and guilt-stricken. The sun had hid for three hours that afternoon, the earth had quaked, rocks were rent. His wife had warned him not to harm “this man.” He was a superstitious man as well as weak.
The chief priests were even more afraid. Of what? That in fact “the seducer” might rise from the dead as He said He would, with the power by which He had called His friend Lazarus from the tomb a short time before. They were so bold as to plead before the pagan governor whom they now considered “a friend of Caesar” : “Sir, we have remembered, that that seducer said, while he was yet alive: After three days I will rise again” (Matt. 27:63). And rise He did, and the guards were the chosen witnesses. For there was an earthquake and an angel came and rolled back the stone securing the sepulcher: “And his countenance was as lightning, and his raiment as snow. And for fear of him, the guards were struck with terror, and became as dead men” (Matt. 28:3-4). And all wide-eyed they ran to tell the news to the chief priests who paid them a huge amount of money to lie and say that the Risen One’s disciples stole away the body while they were sleeping. (Matt. 28: 12-14)
How would they know, if they were sleeping, that His disciples took away the body? And why would Christ’s disciples take away the body of One who failed to rise from the dead as He assured them many times that He would? For what purpose? To pass off a lie? — when it was His truth, His doctrine, His miracles, that had won their allegiance from the start. If Jesus had not risen by His own power then the whole thing was over. A sham, in the end. They would have eventually forgotten all about it, their hopes crushed. As it was, even after seeing Him alive, conversing with Him, and eating with Him, they still did not know what to do with their witness, until they were inflamed by the Holy Ghost. If Christ, their Lord and God, had not risen from the dead and sent them His Spirit, would they have continued their mortified lives, suffered so many persecutions, gone throughout the whole world preaching His Gospel, and died in testimony of Him? No, surely not! They would have defeated themselves, destroyed their own credibility, if they whisked Him away from His sepulcher as a dead man. Needless to say, that would have been quite a miracle in itself for unarmed men, to open a secured tomb at night by torchlight and take away a corpse that was being guarded by a detachment of soldiers. Notwithstanding the absurdity, the Sanhedrin took counsel, and propagated the lie that they paid the soldiers to echo with them: “and this word was spread abroad among the Jews even unto this day” [i.e., the time Saint Matthew wrote his Gospel] (28:15).
What perversity! The chief priest were scandalized by the Lazarus affair, now they were scandalized by their Messiah’s own resurrection. Jesus had prophesied that they would be, using Abraham as a witness, in His parable of the rich man and another Lazarus: “And he [Abraham] said to him [the greedy, rich man in hell]: If they [the hard-hearted Jews] hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise again from the dead” (Luke 15:31).
And the angels said to the holy women who had come to the tomb at sunrise after the Pasch was over: “Why seek you the living with the dead? He is not here, but is risen” (Luke 24: 5-6). Alleluia!
