Luke 24:1–8

Luke 24:1 — "On the first day of the week, at early dawn" Luke's temporal markers are deliberately theological, not merely chronological. The "first day of the week" (Greek: tē de mia tōn sabbatōn) simultaneously echoes the first day of creation in Genesis 1:1–5 and inaugurates a new creation. The pre-dawn hour—"orthros batheos," deep or profound dawn—signals a liminal moment: the world hangs between the old age of death and the new age of life. The women (identified in Luke 24:10 as Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others) arrive faithfully, bearing spices prepared for a body they expected to remain dead. Their very act of preparation, though pious, is already oriented toward a world that no longer exists. They are the last witnesses of the old order and the first of the new.

Luke 24:2 — "They found the stone rolled away from the tomb" The rolling away of the stone is not presented as the mechanism of Jesus's exit—the Risen Christ passes through locked doors (John 20:19)—but as an opening for the witnesses. The stone is removed not to let Jesus out, but to let the women in and to let the truth out. The Greek verb apokulisthenon (rolled away) is in the perfect passive participle, suggesting a completed divine action. The passive voice invites the reader to ask: who rolled it? The answer, unstated here but confirmed elsewhere, is the angel of the Lord (cf. Matthew 28:2). God himself has unsealed the tomb.

Luke 24:3 — "They didn't find the Lord Jesus' body" Luke uses the full reverential title "the Lord Jesus" (ton kyrion Iēsoun) here—a title that carries post-resurrection weight and may reflect the liturgical language of the early Church even as it describes the moment of discovery. The absence is not the point; it is the provocation. An empty tomb alone proves nothing—Mary Magdalene's first instinct in John 20:2 is that someone has stolen the body. Luke is careful not to let the absence be the revelation; the angels must interpret it.

Verses 4–5 — The Two Men in Dazzling Clothing The "two men" (andres duo) are angels, as the parallel accounts and context make clear. Luke consistently refers to heavenly messengers as "men" (cf. Acts 1:10, at the Ascension). The "dazzling" or "lightning-like" clothing (en esthēti astraptousē) recalls the Transfiguration (Luke 9:29), where Jesus's own clothing became "dazzling white." This visual echo is intentional: at the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah—the Law and the Prophets—spoke with Jesus about his "exodus" (Luke 9:31, exodon); now angels announce that the exodus has been accomplished. The women's terror and prostration (* kataklinousōn ta prosōpa eis tēn gēn*) is the proper human response to the breaking-in of divine glory (cf. Ezekiel 1:28; Revelation 1:17). It is also an act of inadvertent worship—they bow before the very message of resurrection life.

Verses 6–7 — "He is not here, but is risen. Remember…" The angel's proclamation is the hermeneutical key to the entire passage: ouk estin hōde, alla ēgerthē. The verb ēgerthē is a divine passive—God has raised him. The angels then perform a remarkable act of scriptural anamnesis: they call the women to remember (mnēsthēte) what Jesus said. The content of that remembrance—"the Son of Man must be delivered up… crucified… and on the third day rise"—is a precise summary of the three Passion predictions in Luke's Gospel (9:22; 9:44; 18:31–33). The word "must" (dei) is crucial: it denotes divine necessity, the fulfillment of God's redemptive plan, not mere historical accident. The crucifixion was not a tragedy that God then reversed; it was part of a single, unified act of salvation.

Luke 24:8 — "They remembered his words" This brief verse—kai emnēsthēsan tōn rhēmatōn autou—is quietly momentous. Memory here is not mere cognitive recall; it is, in the biblical sense, a saving act. The same Greek root (mimnēskomai) is used in Luke 1:54 of God "remembering" his mercy to Israel. When the women remember Jesus's words, they begin to understand—and become the first proclaimers of the resurrection (Luke 24:9–11). Faith, Luke shows, is born at the intersection of the empty tomb and the remembered word.

Catholic tradition reads this passage through several interlocking lenses that together illuminate its extraordinary depth.

The New Creation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the Resurrection of Jesus is the crowning truth of our faith in Christ" (CCC §638) and that Christ's resurrection inaugurates "a new era" in salvation history (CCC §647). The "first day of the week" is not incidental. St. Justin Martyr (First Apology, 67) already in the second century connects Sunday worship explicitly to both the first day of creation and the day of resurrection, calling it "the day on which God, transforming darkness and matter, made the world." The early Church's transfer of worship from the Sabbath to Sunday was grounded in precisely this theology: Sunday is the eighth day, the day beyond the old week, the first day of the new creation inaugurated by Christ's rising.

The Resurrection as Historical and Transcendent. Against gnostic spiritualizations and modern demythologizing alike, the Church insists on the bodily, historical reality of the Resurrection. The empty tomb is one of several convergent signs—not proof by itself, but a necessary condition. As the Catechism states: "the empty tomb…is an essential sign" and "the first element…in coming to faith in the Risen One" (CCC §640). St. Augustine (Sermon 242) stresses that if the body were merely abandoned or dissolved, Christianity would be the proclamation of a ghost, not a savior.

Memory and the Word. The angel's command to "remember" connects to the Church's understanding of Sacred Tradition. The Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum (II Vatican Council, §8) teaches that Tradition is the living memory of the Church, by which she keeps, transmits, and ponders the words and deeds of Christ. The women at the tomb are, in miniature, the whole Church doing precisely what the Church is called to do: receive the word of Christ, carry it through the darkness, and be transformed by the divine reminder that it was always true.

The Role of Women as Witnesses. St. Thomas Aquinas noted (Summa Theologiae III, q.55, a.1) that God fittingly chose women—specifically, those most devoted to Christ in his suffering—as the first witnesses of the resurrection, rewarding fidelity with revelation. Pope St. John Paul II, in Mulieris Dignitatem (§16), celebrates the women at the tomb as "the first witnesses of the Resurrection," whose testimony, though dismissed by the apostles initially (Luke 24:11), was vindicated as true.

For contemporary Catholics, this passage challenges a subtle but pervasive temptation: arriving at faith with spices in hand—prepared to honor a dead teacher, to venerate a memory, to maintain a pious practice around someone who no longer speaks. The women's spices are not a failure of faith but a very human response to grief. The resurrection does not condemn their devotion; it transfigures it.

The angel's command—"Remember what he told you"—is a direct call to immerse oneself in the actual words of Jesus as recorded in Scripture and handed on in Tradition. In an age when Christianity is often reduced to a vague spiritual sentiment, this passage insists that the faith is anchored in specific, remembered words: the Son of Man must suffer, must be crucified, must rise. These are not metaphors.

Practically, this passage invites every Catholic to examine whether their faith is built on a living encounter with the Risen Christ or on consoling habits around a safe, manageable, dead past. The empty tomb asks a question: What are you looking for—a corpse to anoint, or a Lord to follow? Come to Mass, come to Scripture, come to confession not with spices for the dead, but open to the living One who has already rolled away every stone.