The Earth's Most Serious Wound--------The
Empty Tomb
by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
Taken from LIFE OF CHRIST, Image Books, 1958
PART 1: THE PASSION
In the history of the world, only one tomb has ever had a rock
rolled before it, and a soldier guard set to watch it to prevent the dead
man within from rising: that was the tomb of Christ on the evening of the
Friday called Good. What spectacle could be more ridiculous than armed
soldiers keeping their eyes on a corpse? But sentinels were set, lest the
Dead walk, the Silent speak, and the Pierced Heart quicken to the throb
of life. They said He was dead; they knew He was dead; they would say He
would not rise again; and yet they watched! They openly called Him a deceiver.
But, would He still deceive? Would He, Who "deceived" them into believing
they won the battle, Himself win the war for life and truth and love? They
remembered that He called His Body the Temple and that in three days after
they destroyed It, He would rebuild It; they recalled, too, that He compared
Himself to Jonah and said that as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for
three days, so would He be in the belly of the earth for three days and
then would rise again. After three days Abraham received back his son Isaac,
who was offered in sacrifice, for three days Egypt was in a darkness that
was not of nature; on the third day God came down on Mount Sinai. Now,
once again, there was worry about the third day. Early Saturday morning,
therefore, the chief priests and the Pharisees broke the Sabbath and presented
themselves to Pilate, saying:
Your Excellency, we recall how that impostor said while He was
still alive, I am to rise after three days. So will you give orders for
the grave to be made secure until the third day? Otherwise His disciples
may come, steal the body, and then tell the people that He has been raised
from the dead; and the final deception will be worse than the first. [Matthew
27: 63, 64]
Their request for a guard until the "third day" had more reference
to Christ's words about His Resurrection than it did to the fear of the
Apostles stealing a corpse and propping it up like a living thing in simulation
of a Resurrection. But Pilate was in no mood to see this group, for they
were the reason why he had condemned Innocent Blood. He had made his own
official investigation that Christ was dead; he would not submit to the
absurdity of using Caesar's armies to guard a dead Jew. Pilate said to
them:
You may have your guard, go and make it secure as best you can.
[Matthew 27: 65]
The watch was to prevent violence; the seal was to prevent fraud.
There must be a seal, and the enemies would seal it. There must be a watch,
and the enemies must keep it. The certificates of the death and Resurrection
must be signed by the enemies themselves. The Gentiles were satisfied through
nature that Christ was dead; the Jews were satisfied through the Law that
He was dead.
So they went and made the grave secure; they sealed the stone,
and left the guard in charge. [Matthew 27: 66]
The King lay in state with His guard about Him. The most astounding
fact about this spectacle of vigilance over the dead was that the enemies
of Christ expected the Resurrection, but His friends did
not. It was the believers who were the skeptics; it was the unbelievers
who were credulous. His followers needed and demanded proofs before they
would be convinced. In the three great scenes of the Resurrection drama,
there was a note of sadness and unbelief. The first scene was that of a
weeping Magdalen who came to the grave early in the morning with spices,
not to greet the Risen Savior, but to anoint His dead Body.
PART 2 IS IN THE EASTER DIRECTORY IN APRIL
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