Matthew 28 (1): The Women at the Tomb, the Angel's Message, and the Bribed Guards

Orientation #

He does not refer to last time. He says the second half of the chapter (what the apostles saw) is for later, and defers the subtler explanation of “Noli me tangere” to the commentary on John (“we’ll need to get to that”). The next class treats the appearance to the eleven in Galilee with Thomas’s commentary.

The class, in order #

1. Thomas’s division of chapter 28: hearing before seeing (“does Thomas divide chapter twenty-eight”) #

The point: Thomas divides the chapter into two parts, first what the disciples heard, then what they saw.

• He opens with 1 John 1:1-3 (the passage used in the proemium of Dei Verbum): what we have heard, seen with our eyes, beheld, and our hands have touched, concerning the word of life; verse 3 returns to two of the senses, seen and heard.
• Why hearing comes first: belief is from hearing; vision is the reward of belief.
• The same order reappears inside the first part: the women hear from the angel before they see Christ; even with the angel alone, they first hear, then he shows them the empty tomb. “It’s repeated in smaller and smaller parts of the chapter.”
• The first part (what they heard) is itself divided: what they heard from the women, and, “a little bit of a stretch,” what they heard from the guards, who first announce what happened and are then paid to deny it.
• The part on the women: who the women were, the appearance of the angel, the angel’s message.

2. When they came: evening, night, dawn (“evening and morning was the first day”) #

The point: the text seems to start on the Sabbath evening and run to the dawn of Sunday, and Thomas discusses at length how to take it.

• Fathers reconcile it differently: one says they went at night and in the morning; another that they prepared in the evening and went in the morning; Augustine, that the whole is named from the part.
• Most interesting to him: the likeness to Genesis, “evening and morning was the first day.” Thomas notes there is some light in this nighttime, fitting Christ’s rising.
• Spiritual sense: the transition from night to day is the reverse of what we did in sinning (day to night); so it signifies going from sin to grace. Thomas quotes Ephesians 5:8, “you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.”
• Second spiritual sense: what was obscure in the Old Testament and referred to Christ is now made clear by the resurrection, as when he went through the scriptures with the disciples at Emmaus.
• A student asks about the translation; some versions say “late on the Sabbath day,” others “in the evening.”

3. Who came: two women named Mary (“two women both with the same name”) #

The point: Thomas sees significance both in their being women and in their sharing a name.

• Women first: the downfall began with the woman and led the man astray; the restoration begins with the woman and proceeds to the man, the same order, now for good. As Christ redeems man by becoming man, so in redeeming human beings he lets it begin with women, “just as they began the downfall.” “That’s very significant.”
• Two Marys: they can represent the church of the Jews and the church of the Gentiles, now become one.
• A likeness to the great Mary: as Jesus came from her womb passing through (as later through walls), so the tomb is like another womb he passes through. The angel rolls back the stone not to let him out but to show he is not there.
• Aside: a passion play imitating Oberammergau had a huge stone pushed out as Christ came forth, giving a child the wrong impression.
• They came to view the grave out of devotion: they could not see him, at least they could see the grave.

4. The earthquake and why an angel (“there occurred a great earthquake”) #

The point: Thomas gives reasons in the letter and in the spirit for the earthquake, then for the angel’s involvement.

• Earthquake, letter: (1) to wake people up for an important moment; (2) God always joins something divine with the human, as the earthquake at the cross showed divinity while dying showed humanity.
• Earthquake, spirit: Thomas contrasts it with the earthquake at the death: that one signifies our being freed from sins, this one is “brought to a kind of glory.” It also anticipates the final coming, preceded by earthquakes: if an angel cannot come without an earthquake, a fortiori Christ’s coming will have signs in the elements. (A student’s “shaking of our hearts” is set aside for this contrast.)
• Why an angel, three reasons: (1) resurrection is by God himself, and angels are his messengers (“the angel of the Lord”); (2) angels ministered to Christ earlier in the gospel, so they attend the one who rises; (3) earthly things are joined with heavenly things.
• Aside: elsewhere Thomas says angels assume human form to show their association and society with us; cf. Christ’s answer about the seven husbands, “they will be like the angels.”

5. Rolling back the stone and sitting on it (“appropriate for the one who teaches to sit”) #

The point: the stone and the angel’s posture each carry a letter and a spiritual sense.

• Rolling back the stone, letter: so we can see inside; Christ has already come through. Spirit: the stone is the law, and we must see its fulfillment in Christ, who came not to destroy but to fulfill.
• Sitting, three meanings: (1) the teacher sits; the angel is the teacher of the resurrection (cf. “cathedral” from the bishop’s chair, the bishop as teacher of his people); (2) power, authority: he ascended and sat at the right hand; the judge sits to pronounce sentence while the accused and the defending lawyer stand; (3) rest: the resurrection anticipates our final, eternal rest. “The man sitting becomes wise”; the man running around does things; Stephen sees Christ standing because he is about to do something; the next life is contemplating God, like those sitting and becoming wise.
• Tied to authority: a second meaning of the stone, the devil; the angel sits upon the devil, quashed by Christ’s death and resurrection.
• Aside: Charles De Koninck always sat to lecture, even before thousands at the Palais Montcalm in Quebec (“people are more relaxed when you sit down”).

6. The angel’s appearance and its effect on the guards (“his face was as lightning”) #

The point: face, garments and the guards’ fear each signify something.

• Face as lightning: the light of the angelic mind that sees so clearly (cf. Moses’ face veiled after the mountain), and also power and authority, a certain fear to the wicked.
• Garments white as snow: innocence of life. He notes “snow” may be interpolated here from the description of Christ (some texts read it as having “crept in”). Taken as anticipating the last coming: lightning a word to the wicked, snow comforting to the saved.
• The guards shaken with fear and “as dead”: appropriate, Thomas says, because it was life itself in the tomb.

7. The angel’s message (“apokritheis, and answering”) #

The point: the angel “answers” though the women said nothing, and his words repeat the chapter’s order.

• Thomas: he answers their desire. Berquist compares Thomas on the psalms: sometimes God answers a prayer, sometimes an expressed desire; he answers the heart and intention, not only the prayer.
• “Do not fear”: to calm them, as with Zechariah and Mary at the Annunciation. Thomas: whether a good angel or a devil appears there is fear, but the good angel calms and composes, the bad one disturbs.
• “I know that you seek Jesus the crucified”: he commends what they came for, not their lack of belief so far.
• Order of the next words: “he is not here; he arose, as he said” (proved by Christ’s word), then “come, see the place”: hearing before seeing again, in the larger cycle from hearing the angel to seeing Christ, and in the whole chapter.
• The message: tell his disciples he is raised; he goes before you into Galilee; there you will see him.
• Aside: an Annunciation painting he saw in Europe, unique among hundreds, with a servant girl in the next room who has dropped her implements to listen (“painter’s license”).

8. Galilee and the count of appearances (“he was seen five times on the day”) #

The point: why Galilee, and why Matthew must not be read as if there were no appearance before Galilee.

• Why Galilee, letter: (1) he was accustomed to spend time with them there, familiar surroundings; (2) they are more secure there, less threatened by the chief priests than in Judea.
• Spirit: following the fathers, Galilee means transmigration, three ways: sin to grace (Jerusalem to Galilee); this mortal life to the immortal life where we see him as he is; (a student adds, and he accepts) the going over from the Jews to the Gentiles.
• Thomas, following Bede and others, counts five appearances on the day he rose, in Jerusalem: (1) Mary Magdalene (John; Luke does not narrate it but says he was first seen by her); (2) the women in Matthew, holding his feet; (3) Peter, not narrated but reported in Luke 24:34 (“has appeared to Simon,” read in class) and 1 Corinthians 15:5 (“seen of Cephas”), perhaps third in time, before Emmaus; (4) the disciples of Emmaus; (5) all the apostles except Thomas.
• Five others in the gospels: with Thomas present; at Tiberias; the one in Mark where he upbraids them (taken as distinct, since it is the group); the mountain in Matthew, with the command to baptize; and the last, in John. Ten in the gospels; five on the day, “significant, the five wounds.”
• 1 Corinthians 15:4-7, read: Cephas, “the twelve” (only eleven, a significant number), above five hundred, James, all the apostles. So at least thirteen appearances touched on in scripture. He does not settle which of Paul’s overlap with the gospels (“wouldn’t they be the same?”).

9. The women depart; Jesus meets them (“with fear and great joy”) #

The point: the women’s departure, greeting, and worship each have a spiritual sense.

• Departing quickly from the sepulchre with fear and joy: letter, fear because of the angel, joy at the message. Spirit: the soul going out of sin, repenting quickly; fear that sins are not fully forgiven or that one may fall again; joy at resurrection from sin; running as progressing from virtue to virtue.
• Jesus’s greeting: the Greek “chairete” (rejoice); Thomas takes it as “joy,” though Berquist notes Thomas is “a little confused” about which Greek word it is, the word for joy in verse 8 (chara) being different.
• They hold him by the feet and worship: spirit, sinners approach God to be illuminated and should cling to him.
• Jesus’s message repeats the angel’s: fear not, tell my brothers to go into Galilee. Galilee again literal and spiritual (transmigration).
• “My brothers” (adelphois), three reasons: (1) same nature: one risen from the dead might be thought not a man; (2) brothers in grace; (3) co-heirs of Christ, sharing his inheritance of God.
• Back to verse 9: they touch him here, whereas Mary Magdalene was told “Noli me tangere.” Thomas quotes Augustine: she at first doubted and was not worthy to touch; now doubt is gone. Thomas’s subtler account is in his John commentary. Aside: women are in some sense more humble than men.

10. The guards and the chief priests (“were you awake or were you asleep”) #

The point: the second part of what was heard, and the chain of corruption from priests to soldiers to people.

• The guards first announce everything truthfully. Then the evil of the chief priests and elders, the corruption of the soldiers, and the corruption of the populace who might believe them; it all begins with the priests.
• They gather with the elders and take counsel: deliberate, not sudden; money used for a purpose it was not meant for.
• The story (“the disciples came by night and stole him while we slept”) is flimsy. Augustine’s dilemma: if awake, they could not have done it; if asleep, you did not know what happened.
• Chrysostom’s points: the apostles were scared stiff, paralyzed; if they had come it would have been before the guards were posted; removing the rock could hardly be done without waking dozing guards; the garments were left in the tomb, not what one does in a hurry, and they would stick to the body. So the flimsy story in a sense confirms the resurrection.
• The priests promise to make excuses with Pilate; Thomas: Pilate probably did not care one way or the other.
• Taking the silver, the soldiers did as taught; the story spread among the Jews “to this very day.” End of the first half of the chapter.
• Aside: C.S. Lewis, as an unbeliever, told by someone on campus that the proofs for the resurrection were actually pretty good, had “a sinking feeling” that it might be true.
• Aside: yearly catalogues from Prometheus Books (Prometheus, symbol of atheism, taken over by Marx) always include something like “The Passover Plot” propping up the guards’ story.

His words #

• hearing / seeing: Thomas’s basis for dividing ch. 28; belief is from hearing, vision the reward of belief.
• sense of the letter / spiritual (mystical) sense: paired throughout for each detail.
• naming the whole from the part: Augustine’s way of reconciling evening and morning.
• transmigration: the fathers’ meaning of “Galilee”; sin to grace, mortal to immortal, Jews to Gentiles.
• apokritheis: “answering”; the angel answers a desire, not a spoken word.
• chairete: Jesus’s greeting, taken by Thomas as “joy”; distinct from chara (joy) in v. 8.
• adelphois: “to my brothers”; same nature, brothers in grace, co-heirs.
• Noli me tangere: the Latin of Jesus’s word to Mary Magdalene in John.
• “the man sitting becomes wise”: Thomas as quoted by his old teacher; the angel’s sitting as teacher, authority, rest.
• a fortiori: if an angel’s coming has an earthquake, Christ’s final coming will have signs.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew, ch. 28, vv. 1-15 (followed throughout)
• Matthew 28:1-15 (verses read as he goes)
• 1 John 1:1-3
• Luke 24:34
• 1 Corinthians 15:4-7

Mentioned

• Ephesians 5:8 (quoted by Thomas)
• Genesis 1, “evening and morning was the first day”
• Vatican II, Dei Verbum, proemium
• John 20, “Noli me tangere”; John 21, Tiberias (inferred locus)
• Mark, the appearance where he upbraids them
• Luke, the disciples at Emmaus; Acts, Stephen seeing Christ standing (inferred locus)
• Exodus, Moses’ veiled face (inferred locus)
• Matthew, “not to destroy the law but to fulfill”; the seven husbands, “like the angels”
• Thomas, Commentary on John (for Noli me tangere); Thomas on the Psalms
• Augustine, Chrysostom, Bede (as cited by Thomas)

His questions #

• Does Thomas divide chapter 28 into two or into three parts? Two: first they heard, then they saw.
• What does Thomas use as the basis of the division? Hearing before seeing, since belief comes from hearing and vision is its reward.
• What is the significance of the earthquake? To wake people for the moment, and to join the divine to the human; spiritually, glory, and a sign of the final coming.
• Why was it appropriate that an angel be involved? Angels are the messengers of the God who raises, they ministered to Christ, and earthly is joined to heavenly.
• Why does the angel sit? Teacher, authority, rest; and he sits on the stone as on the devil, quashed.
• Why does he go to Galilee to be seen? Familiar surroundings and safety; spiritually, transmigration.
• How many times was he seen on the day he rose? Five, in Jerusalem; ten in the gospels; at least thirteen counting Paul.
• Why does he call the apostles “my brothers”? Same nature, brothers in grace, co-heirs.
• Were you awake or were you asleep? Either way the guards’ story fails; the flimsiness confirms the resurrection.