Four Books of the Gospels 4.149–4.760

The sun will hide its ruddy rays in murky shadows, the grace of the moon's light will lose its course, and the fire-haired stars will rush down and leave the sky. Every power of the heaven above, shaken, will give signs by which the offspring of man may shine on the summit of heaven; and unceasing lamentation will press upon the tribes of every kind, when the Son of man comes through the stars with fire-coloured clouds, mighty in majesty. Then the trumpet, shrilling with a terrifying blare, will gather the just who are called from the four quarters of the world. For the present generation of the world will not pass away until the end comes after and closes all that is owed. This earth and the heaven above will be dissolved into fire, but my words will never be dissolved from their order. What that day will be, it is right that all should not know, except the Lord of all things alone, who turns the stars. As once the raging waters covered the lands, and the violence of the flood with a sudden sweep carried off all as they went about their different tasks, so our coming will suddenly come down from the sky, rolling flames; nor will it press all under one condition. For then, when two are cleaving the glad acres into furrows with the ploughshare pressed down, one ploughman will be taken, his body seized, and the other, unknowing, will be left in the vast field.

Even those lying on the one coverlet of a bed will meet different judgment by different lot: one, left behind, will look for his companion among the covers. Therefore let the servants keep watch, because the Lord's coming, unknown to them, will come down at a sudden hour. If the keeper of a house knew the sure time when the thief would come, he would keep watch and carry his weapons far out to meet him, so that no one might break into the house. But you, always stand by with attentive minds, for the Son of man will return here to you suddenly and unexpectedly, keeping his rewards for the just. That servant will be faithful to whom the man who is himself father of the house, setting out on a long journey, chose to entrust the whole house and the servants: wise and very blessed is he whom the Lord, when he comes, will see keeping his commands. He will crown that servant with greater honour. But that unhappy servant who, indulging in sordid luxury, despises his master's delay, wearies his fellow servants with beatings, gives himself to sluggish drunkenness and keeps company at the banquets of the luxurious: his lord will come and will throw the servant, raging heedlessly, headlong into the punishment he deserves. Everlasting weeping and gnashing will await him. The heavenly kingdom can be compared to ten maidens, of whom one part was wiser, the other part most foolish, with very dull hearts.

They all ran to meet the wedding procession, girded with the adornment of flame-haired torches. But the wise part took care to carry oil with them, so that their lamps might take up the flame. Such prudence the foolish did not have. And when the bridegroom was delayed, they all fell asleep along the broad streets. Now in the middle of the night a great shout arose and grew, and warned them to run to meet the glad procession and adorn the roads with flashing torches. The maidens hurried to rise, to trim the lights on their torches and to feed the flames with rich oil. Then the foolish asked to be given a share of the oil which they now saw the prudent carrying with them. But the wise company feared that if an equal portion were given to all out of so little, the rich nourishment of the bright flame would fail them all alike; so the foolish went off to buy liquid oil. While they were gone, the whole glad procession passed by, and only the prudent band went along with the bridegroom. The dull ones arrived later, too slow, and in vain knocked again and again at the bridegroom's doors and closed threshold, plying unwelcome prayers that they, poor things, might be allowed to enter the glad threshold.

None of the bridegroom's companions, nor the bridegroom himself, would know them. Keep watch, then, in fear, because the hour of the coming is not certain to you. For as a man whose lot it was to set out into distant lands, entrusting talents to his slaves to be managed, gave five to one; another received two to keep; a third undertook the care of managing one talent, since different strengths merit different charges. Those to whom the larger portion of money was entrusted increased it, vying with each other, with double gains. But he to whom the care of one talent was entrusted dug into the earth and kept the money without fruit. And now the lord was present again: then the first and the second showed him that they had doubled what was entrusted to them. The master praised them and promised to entrust greater things to such faithfulness. But the third dug up the talent and gave it back to his lord with these words: Because I knew that I served a severe lord, who reaps crops grown from another's seed, I was afraid, and preferred to entrust your silver to the earth, so that I could always give it back to you safe. Then the lord answered the servant thus: If you dared to say that you did not know my ways, I could grant pardon for such great wickedness.

But knowing this, you should rather have seen to it that the money you managed brought us fruit. Therefore let our portion be taken from the lazy one, and let a greater possession then be given to the prudent one, whom I found to have heaped up my five talents with double gains. For it is certain that those deserve greater things whose fuller estate abounds with a heaped-up store. But he who has small means and a lazy heart, that little will justly be taken from him altogether, so that the worthless slave, plunged into the lowest darkness, may ply everlasting weeping with the gnashing of punishment. See, the Son of man will come, and, thronged by the Father's ministers, will sit as judge on the lofty seat. Then all nations will come together from the different parts of the world, and he will separate all the just from the stain of the wicked and gladly set them on the right side, but will leave the depraved, despised, on the left; as a shepherd separates the pastures of a mixed flock, giving the woolly sheep the soft grass of the meadow on the right, and leaving the thickets on the left for the shaggy goats to crop. Then the king will turn to those on the right and say: Let the holy come here; let them receive the gifts of the Father long owed them, which are as old as the shining world and have been prepared and promised to the just from the first beginning.

For this grateful people once refreshed me when I was weary with hunger, often took away my thirst with drink, often opened the hospitality of their house to me when I came, and when I was naked I received the kindest coverings of clothing, and in the punishments of prison I found comfort from them. Then the blessed will answer the Lord: None of us remembers seeing you naked, nor did anyone see you oppressed by the hard rule of hunger, nor remembers seeing you bound in the punishments of prison. Then the judge will answer them: Whoever in pity has done these humble labours for my brothers, it is certain that he sets sweet fruit before me. But you, unjust, go into the just flames and burn your malignant minds for ever in punishments, which the Father has prepared in the horrible depths, through the pools of the abyss, for the horrible demon himself and his allies. For once, when I suffered thirst, you gave me no cups; when I was punished with hunger, not the mercy of a little bread; when I was a stranger, no cover of roof or clothing even for a little while, a small portion out of great wealth; nor, when I lay shut in behind prison bars or in sickness, was the comfort of your visiting ever mine. To these words the condemned faction will then answer:

None of us ever remembers seeing you, either suffering the sickly labour of thirst or of savage hunger, or wandering as a stranger through the towns in weary want, or plunged into the punishments of prison or weighed down by sickness, so that just pity might be shown you in your distress. To them the Lord will say: When your savagery swelled in a proud heart against those in narrow circumstances and trampled on the humble and least, it spurned me in them. When he has said these words, he will repay each according to merit. The wretched unjust will be pierced with punishment for ever, and the salvation granted to the just will remain for ever." While he was saying such things, a sister, tearing her hair in her grief, anxious with just care over her brother's sickness, urged a young man to run quickly, so that Christ might save his friend from such great misfortune. For the woman had been accepted for her kindly merits, and for her service Christ embraced her deserving brother and household with full love and held them dear. The messenger came and reported that the young man whom Christ loved lay at the end, through the sorrows of sickness, holding the very border between death and life.

His name was Lazarus; but Christ, struck by the bitter words, said: "This violent sickness, if you believe it, does not lead to death, but is so that God may be celebrated with worthy honour by the just and the offspring of man may shine with holy power." Then he said to the disciples: "Lazarus is sleeping now, but I will make the dear young man rise again." The disciples said: "Full health can follow sleep and return"; they did not grasp that Christ spoke of death under the name of sleep. He removed their error with these words: "Lazarus has fallen into death; but joy comes to my mind from this, and it arms your faith more strongly in me, that you see that I, far away, see all things. But let us hurry," he said. Then Didymus said: "Let us go, and let us all be forced to fall in death together, as the Jewish nation has so often threatened." And now Christ arrived; but it happened to be the fourth day since he was buried, and grief and tearful houses held the sisters, sunk in the black darkness of death. The leaders of the Jewish nation and dear kinsfolk had gathered there, giving due comfort. But Martha, hearing that Christ had come, ran to meet him and left the house and her grieving sister, and called from far off: "O, if only your power had been with us and had snatched our brother from bitter death!

For whatever you ask, it is certain that it can come to you." The Lord comforted her in her groaning with these words: "Take up again, woman, a strong mind with courage. Lazarus will rise again into the light of life." And the woman said: "Surely all mortals will rise to the gifts of life when the end comes to the world." Christ likewise brought forth this word from his holy heart: "See, I am the restoration of bright life for you. Whoever believes in me will be able to lay down the death he has taken on and join his life to an unending age. And whoever takes faith into a living heart will never touch the horrid threshold of death. Do you believe this from a pure heart, Martha?" She then said: "This one faith will hold my heart: that in you the sublime and venerable heavenly offspring of God has come under the lofty name of Christ." She said this and went into the house to make her sister Mary hurry; she told her sister, overwhelmed with grief, that the holy teacher had come and was calling her too, signalling everything with a silent nod. Mary leapt out at the name of Christ; and the crowd of believers from Solyma followed her as she groaned, thinking that the sisters were bringing their weeping to the tomb. When she saw Jesus, the bringer of salvation, she fell at his feet and burst out with this cry from her heart:

"If you could have seen my brother alive, Lazarus could not have yielded to hard death." Christ, joining the grief of his heart to these tears, asked where the tomb was in which the limbs, robbed of the warmth of the winged soul, had lately been laid. Without delay they showed him, weeping and sad, the tomb under a hewn rock; when the Holy One saw it closed with a weighty stone, he ordered it soon to be moved with many levers; but Martha's voice struck the air: "See, four days and as many nights in order have passed since the limbs were laid in the ground and rest there. I would think that the body, as its warmth has fled, gives off a wretched stench from its dissolving limbs." Christ answered these words thus: "It has been said so often already that faith stands firm in great things by the power of believers; but the glory of the supreme Father is now present, if you have the strength of faith." When he had said this, and the huge stone lay open, its barriers torn away, his power, knowing itself, soon lifted its eyes to heaven and prayed to the Father with these words: "Outstanding thanks, holy Father, we give you; you always hear me calmly with venerable ears; but let the people present learn to believe that I am sent." When he had said this, he stood at once on the very threshold of the tomb, filling the hollow rock with a shout directed into it:

"Lazarus, receive, see, your soul returning to your sleeping limbs, and bring yourself out of the tomb." Without delay, his hands and feet bound, he suddenly came out of the tomb, his face wrapped in woven linen and his whole body bound with a slender bandage. Then Jesus ordered him to be loosed and sent him home rejoicing. When the Jews who had followed Mary and Martha saw the venerable deed of so great a one, some believed and followed the honour of such power; but others went back to the city and told all the wonders to the proud Pharisees among the leaders. So a council of the scribes, and now a larger number of the people, was called, where the beautiful halls of Caiaphas's house, the chief of the priests, shine on high. There they resolved to lay Christ low in death, but to avoid the days of the Passover, lest, with the crowds of people present, the discordant peoples should turn their fury to war. He was in the house of Simon, from whom livid leprosy had fled by his power. See, as he reclined, a woman came near and, from an alabaster jar holding precious ointment of widely fragrant oil, poured it over holy Christ from the top of his head. The disciples protested, saying that the bodies of the wretched poor could have been helped with the price of the ointment. The Lord stopped these words and approved the deed:

"Stop hindering this just woman's service. There will always be time given you to help the poor, but you will not always be granted to see me. She performs this, greatly to be praised, as an office for my burial, and such deeds will fill the world." Then one of the disciples, Judas, madly withdrew and ran to the leaders with these words: "What price may I hope for, if I can betray to you and show you the master you have long sought?" They at once fixed thirty weights of silver; for these Judas gave himself over to deep crime. And now the day of the Passover had come forth at first dawn. The disciples asked where he wished to eat the Passover supper; he ordered that a certain man, unnamed, be sought out for him, who would receive the last commands of the master. Soon, at the beginning of evening, as the twelve disciples reclined together, the master foretold in these words: "See, the time presses when one of you is turning over in his wicked heart how to betray Christ to death." At once they all asked who, with such daring, had taken so much poison into an insane heart. He then said: "He is eating with me at the meal now.

But the offspring of man will undergo, in its time, the punishment long foretold. Wretched through all ages is he who will give up the Just One; how much happier he would be if he had never touched the light of life on earth!" And Judas, heavily pressed in his guilty heart, said: "Does such suspicion touch Judas?" The Lord answered: "I see that you say such things." When he had said this, he broke bread with his hands, then gave it out, divided, and, having prayed in holiness, taught the disciples that they were thus eating his own body. Then the Lord took a cup and, when it was filled with wine, sanctified it with words of thanks and gave them to drink, and taught them that he had divided his own blood, and said: "This blood has redeemed the offences of the people; drink this, which is mine. For believe true words: after this I will never taste the drink of the vine, until the kingdom of the Father, by the gift of a better life, grants me to rise again to new wine." Then, having sung a hymn in holy harmonies, they all climbed the heights of the Mount of Olives. Then Christ brought forth these words from his heart: "At this present time of night, terror will scatter you all far and wretchedly, your prince deserted. For so it is written: At the fall of the shepherd all the sheep will take flight in different directions through the countryside.

Afterwards, when life gives me back new honours of heaven, I will go ahead of you, and flying through the pleasant countryside of Galilee I will teach your companies in their native fields." Peter answered: "All others, if one may believe it, may waver and deny your precepts, but no chance will ever change my heart." Then he said: "This night, which brings the bright stars over the lands and now, pressing down the light, broods over the waves, will hear you in fear tell lies three times and deny Christ, most valiant Peter, even before the roofs of houses ring with the birds." But Peter said: "I would rather suffer hard death than that this voice should forget and deny its master." They all persisted in promising this strength of heart. There are fields with a Hebrew name, Gessamane. There the author of light and life went forth, and the disciples followed around him, Judas having fled. And there he ordered the rest of his ministers to sit down. But he himself took Peter and the sons of Zebedee and went on far through pathless places. Then, sad with heavy anguish, he said: "Now my mind, turning over sad things, troubles my heart even to death; but now shut out lazy sleep, and spend this anxious night with me in watching." He said this, went forward a little, pressed his body to the earth, and lying prostrate prayed in these words:

"If it is right, Father, let the violence of this cup, pressing on us with its strong draught, pass from me. But let your will come rather than ours, the sentence you have decreed for such great things." Then he returned to the disciples, but sleep had undone them all, lying on the ground with panting limbs. Then he said to Peter: "Have you no strength to give me one wakeful hour in such great misfortunes? But watch, I pray, lest horrid temptation seize you and throw you headlong down the slippery slopes of savage death. This spirit is strong, but the body is weak and totters." He withdrew again to the height of the secluded mountain and prayed to the Father: "Most gentle ruler of all things, since this cup cannot pass, let your will now come forth in our lot." Again he found the disciples weighed down by sleep, and again, having prayed the same to the Father, he addressed them as they lay bound in the weary languor of rest: "Now you may sleep and go back to your companions; for see, he is coming who will give up my body to all that the stained faction will lay upon my limbs." As he spoke, Judas arrived with a crowded band, at the command of the leaders and the fierce people. Some with drawn swords, some trusting in the weight of their clubs, followed the signal promised by raging Judas.

For he had agreed that he would touch Christ with a kiss, so that the wretched crowd could easily seize him whom they did not know. When he, dissembling, greeted him with a soft voice and touched the venerable mouth of the Just One with his lips, at once Christ said: "You may fulfil it all, whatever the cause for which you have come here so prepared." The crowds laid hands on Christ and seized him. Then one of the disciples, raised up in anger, rushed with a gleaming sword at the priest's servant and by the force of the blow snatched off his ear, struck from his temple. Christ said to him: "Put down your sword, my friend; for whoever fiercely trusts in the avenging sword, the same vengeance of the sword will justly await him. Or could I not call the camps of heaven and lead the Father's countless squadrons into battle? But the scripture must be fulfilled, as is due, in what befalls me. But you who run together with drawn swords and clubs to seize me: see, I come to meet you, I who always sat with you in the midst of the temple's height and taught, and no one dared such things against one man alone, though so many bark around me." The disciples fled in every direction, leaving Christ. And now the Saviour stood in the hall of Caiaphas, when all the scribes and leaders who had been summoned came.

But Peter, following at a distance alone, sat secretly and sadly with the servants, awaiting the final end in so great a storm. See, the priests pressed on to seek false witnesses and wished to weave together invented charges by which they might lay death upon innocent Christ. But no one seemed enough for such great fury. At last witnesses leapt forward who had heard Jesus say that he alone could overturn the temple and, once it was overturned, restore it again in three days. The chief of the priests himself, gnashing in his fury, pressed him as he kept silent, and said: "Why do you dare to answer nothing now to such great charges, convicted as you are by true witnesses among the leaders? I will adjure you, then, by the kingdom of the supreme Thunderer, to confess openly whether it is right to believe you the Christ." Then he answered the proud man thus: "These words alone come forth true from your heart; you will see the majesty of the offspring of man coming through the air, when he sits at the right hand of holy power beneath fire-coloured clouds." Hearing this, the priest tore his garment from his breast, exulting in fury and with a blind heart, and said: "You have heard the foul words of a profane man fighting against God; let polluted religion rather rise up in anger, and all of you now declare your mind." All cried out and vied to condemn him to death.

Then shameless spittle filled the holy face of Christ, and slaps on his cheeks and frequent blows on his head insulted him, and all vied to mock him with words: "Christ, prophesy whose palm has struck you!" But a woman, because she had seen Peter sad inside, said: "Were you too, young man, added as a companion to this man, whom the leaders' sentence mockingly condemns?" He denied it and tried to get himself out of the fierce house. But see, another, seeing him as he went out at the first threshold, betrayed him to the servants in the same words. Again he swore and denied that he knew him. Then many of those following came up to question him, and said they recognized him by the sound of his voice, because all his words rang with the speech of Galilee. And Peter, swearing in words of cursing, affirmed in denial that he did not know him, whoever he was. This word the bird followed with its song, shaking its flapping wings beneath the roof, and Christ's prophecies surrounded Simon's sad mind; and going out from there he wept bitterly. Now the stars gave way to the light, and the swift sun came forth, filling the trembling lands with its rays. And now they were dragging Christ, his hands bound behind his back, from the council to the governor's presence, with great shouting.

Meanwhile the Lord Jesus, standing before the lofty tribunal, received these words from Pilate: "Do you stand here as king of the Judaean nation, as is said?" Christ answered: "I hear this in your words." Then a terrible accusation of the Just One rose up and roared, and wicked eloquence pressed hard on the Holy One. Jesus did not deign to answer the fierce men at all. Pilate asked what the reason for his silence was. He, persisting all the more, kept a wondrous silence. It happened that on the solemn day the laws, by custom, required that one man condemned to death be granted release; and there was in chains a robber of notorious name, whom the people, hostile to Christ, burned to set free to life. But Pilate's wife, terrified in sleep by fierce visions, anxiously begged her husband by messages and prayers to keep away from punishing the Just One. Then the judge tried again to search out the minds of the leaders, and asked that the one they wished to free from the punishment at hand be released under the law at the people's choice. But the leaders, with lavish canvassing, urged the people to ask for the robber under the law and to refuse Christ. And after the leaders' opinion had inflamed the crowd and it asked rather that the robber's life be granted to it, the governor consulted the people as to what they wanted done with Jesus.

The people, inflamed with evil, stirred up savage tumults, and again and again demanded the punishment of the cross for him who, they said, desired the name of king, and who, having confessed himself an enemy of Caesar, had condemned himself with his own mouth. At last, overcome by force and detesting the bloody office, Pilate protested that he kept his heart free of this blood, and washed his hands of the crime before them, so that the stain might remain on the nation alone. At this they cried out all the more: "Let this blood follow us, us, and let this crime and guilt overflow upon our race." Pilate granted Barabbas to the people and the law, and, overcome, gave up Jesus to the punishment of the cross. But Judas the traitor, after he saw that, having taken the price of crime, he had marked him out for the raging crowd, unhappy man, condemned his own deeds with true complaints and threw the silver into the temple, detesting it. And beginning to take his own punishment by the noose, he seized a shapeless death from the top of a fig tree. Then the priests, saying that it was unlawful to give to the temple treasury what was the price of blood, though they had believed it lawful to give it when the blood was being sold, bought a field under the true name of blood, and so marked their impious crimes with a horrid deed. This the true voice of the prophet, singing in veiled words long ago, had revealed, the outcome of things in the order of the ages:

"The profane set down thirty minas of silver, fixing this as the price of the precious body, which is soon passed on again for the potter's little field." The Just One was handed over to the fierce soldiers, ministers of crime: he offered his body to wicked mockery. They put on him a purple tunic and a red cloak, bound his head with bloody thorns, and a reed went with his right hand in place of a sceptre. Then, kneeling, they hailed him king and lord of the Judaean nation, washed his face with spittle, and mocked him with wicked blows on his holy head. When the mad soldiers had carried out this mockery, they clothed him in the covering of his own garment and dragged the holy and just one to the punishment of the cross. But see, as they went out they seized a certain Simon, born in Cyrene, and ordered him to carry the wood on which the unchangeable order of the world, pressing on, drove them by savage commands to fasten the Lord of light. And when they came to the place whose name is Golgatha, they gave Christ a cup of wine mixed with gall. But when he had touched it with the tip of his taste, he refused it, so that the ancient sayings might be fulfilled by such things; and yet the insulting fury of men did not demand everything. And now the body hung fastened to the cross on the tree, and the possession of a single soldier, keeping the weave untouched, received the seamless tunic by lot among them all.

And they set up a written title of the charge and his desert, that he had been king of the Judaean people and nation. It happened that two robbers, one on either side, shared the punishment with him; but the blind madness of the raging people insulted Christ as he hung there: "This is he who alone could destroy the temple; this is he who could restore it in the course of three days. But now let the venerable offspring of the Thunderer come down and release body and soul from the punishment of the cross." The leaders of the mad crowd followed with these words; and the Pharisees and scribes and the mad faction mocked him, shaking their heads and wagging their tongues in insane speech, to their own bonds of eternal punishment: "Did he not once save others from the fierce bonds of disease? Why can he not release himself from punishment? See the king of our nation whom we were to believe: let him free his body from the strong wood! Then we shall be able to believe his holy signs as they deserve. He trusts in God the Father: why does the venerable power not wish to free his own offspring from punishment?" No less did the robbers, groaning on the right and the left, fastened to crosses for the lot of their crimes, revile him. Now the course of the light had climbed to the middle of the sky, when suddenly the sun fled from their eyes, clothed itself in murky darkness, and hid the trembling day in night.

But when the troubled sun had passed the ninth hour, the dismayed light returned to its world. And Christ called on the Father with a loud voice in the manner of the Hebrew tongue; but the people, not understanding, thought he was calling Helias. Then one man, roused, pressed a foul sponge bound to a reed against his lips and made him drink a sour taste. The rest of the raging crowd cackled, saying: "Let us watch together whether Helias, who rests in his lofty seat, may perhaps be sent back from heaven and come to free the wretched king fastened to the stake." Then the Lord's cry, sent forth with great effort, mingled his soul, its companion, with the airs of heaven. At once the veil of the holy temple was torn, and the linen, burst into two parts, gaped open; the trembling earth was shaken with all its weight, and the broken rocks leapt apart from their mass. Then the tombs of men of old lay open, their barriers thrust back, and just souls returned through their limbs and were seen wandering here and there by the people, far and wide through the city walls: so all things terrified the world. The hearts of the soldiers were the first to be shaken with fear, those who were guarding the bodies given over to savage punishment, and they called him the offspring of God and confessed him the Christ.

From a lookout all the women who used to serve Christ watched such great wonders. Now evening had begun to follow the departing sun, and one of the leaders, more just than the rest, alone dared to ask for the body of Christ for the last offices. He bore the name of Joseph from Arimathea, and had once lent his ears to the words of Jesus. He asked Pilate to grant him the limbs from which the horrid power of punishment had lately taken life. The governor granted it; shining woven linen covered the body, and it was laid in a new cave in the rock. Immense rolling stones closed the threshold; from a lookout the women kept watch and saw everything. And now the day was filling the lands with ruddy light which by the ancient law always commanded rest; but the unmerciful fury of the leaders kept no rest. They gathered and burdened the judge's ears with these words: "A most just punishment has undone the snares of error. Now it is fitting to remember that that deceiver used always to boast to the common people and promise that he would return from the darkness of death to the light of life with the sun's third return.

We ask this: that a guard of soldiers watch the new grave, lest a fierce boldness arise in the disciples to steal the body, and a fresh madness disturb the people." And Pilate answered: "A soldier is granted to guard, as you wish, the body buried in the earth." They came together and rolled the huge weight of the rock, and guarded the threshold with seals and the stone with soldiers. Now the stars of the night began to yield to the coming sun; then the women ran together to visit the tomb's enclosure; but at once an earthquake shook all the earth, and a messenger, gliding from the opened heaven, came down and rolled the stone from the threshold of the tomb. His face shone like the fire of lightning, and the covering of his garment gleamed like snow. Terror had shut out all sense from the soldiers, and they lay together like corpses laid low in death. But he spoke to the women thus: "Let no fear shake and weary your hearts now; for it is plain that you seek the holy body, which wicked madness fastened to the wood of the cross. Christ has risen, and with his holy body, death defeated, he has received the eternal light of life. Now you may see that the limbs that were buried lie here no longer in the seat of the tomb.

And tell the disciples besides, returning quickly and in haste, that Christ has come back to the shores of light and goes before them, rejoicing, into the land of Galilee." At these words and sights burning joy flooded their astonished minds, with amazement and wavering fear. Then, celebrating their joy as they ran headlong, they left the tomb and reported this to the disciples. See, in the middle of the way bright Jesus showed himself and kindly bade the faithful women greet him. They ran to meet him, took hold of his knees and feet, and in fear venerated Jesus, the conqueror of death. Then he strengthened their hearts with these words: "Let all fear leave your minds; and see, carry these commands quickly to our brothers: if you care to see us, go gladly and cross quickly into the land of Galilee." Meanwhile the hearts of the guards at the tomb were terrified; they sent a part of their number to report such great wonders to the Jews. But the mad band, already once wholly given over to insane fury, eagerly paid the soldiers great rewards and bought a report with silver: that the boldness of the disciples, protected by darkness, had broken the threshold and secretly stolen and carried off the body.