On the following day, the chief priests[1] and the Pharisees went to Pilate and said: “Sir, we have remembered that that seducer said, while He was yet alive: ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Command, therefore, the sepulchre to be guarded until the third day, lest His disciples come and steal Him away, and say to the people: ‘He is risen from the dead’.” Pilate gave them guards [2] to watch the sepulchre, and they moreover sealed [3] the stone.
COMMENTARY.
The Soul of Jesus Christ, immediately after His Death, went to Limbo, to announce to the spirits of the just the glad tidings that the work of Redemption was accomplished, and that they would soon ascend with Him to heaven. It was for this reason that our Lord said to the penitent thief: “This day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.” Our Lord’s Divinity was inseparably joined to His Soul.
Our Paschal Lamb. Our Divine Saviour, crucified on the Jewish paschal feast, is the true Paschal Lamb; and therefore St. Paul says: “Christ, our Pasch, is sacrificed” (i Cor. 5, 7). No bone of the typical lamb might be broken (Old Test. XXXIII), and this law was meant to typify that no bone would be broken of the true Paschal Lamb, our Redeemer. This, as you have read, came to pass.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus. God did not suffer the bones of His crucified Son to be broken; and in order that no one might attribute this fact to chance, He announced, fifteen hundred years before, by
- ↑ The chief priests. When they learnt how honourably Jesus had been buried, their suspicions were aroused. They did not believe that Jesus could really rise from the dead, but the badness of their own hearts made them suspect that the disciples would steal His Body.
- ↑ Guards. Of Roman soldiers. A guard usually consisted of sixteen men, divided into watches of four, each watch having to keep guard for three hours.
- ↑ Sealed. Our Lord’s enemies could not content themselves with an ordinary guard. They could not trust the soldiers implicitly, and feared that they might be suborned by the disciples of Jesus, and allow’ these latter to steal the Body. To guard against this they sealed the stone which closed the entrance to the sepulchre, by stretching a cord across it, the two ends of which were secured by seals.
