Matthew 28:1–4

Matthew 28:1 — The Women at Dawn Matthew's temporal markers are theologically loaded. "After the Sabbath" (ὀψὲ δὲ σαββάτων) signals the close of the old covenantal week; "the first day of the week" (εἰς μίαν σαββάτων) inaugurates a new one. The Resurrection does not merely occur within time — it reorders time itself. The early Fathers and later the Church recognized this "first day" as the primordial day of new creation, echoing Genesis 1:1–5 when God first called light out of darkness. That it is dawn (ἐπιφωσκούσῃ, literally "as it was growing light") heightens the symbolism: light is returning to a world that has sat in the shadow of the crucifixion.

The two women are identified with precision. "Mary Magdalene" appears in all four Resurrection accounts; the early Church — including St. Gregory the Great (Homily 25 on the Gospels) — honored her as Apostola Apostolorum, "Apostle to the Apostles," the first herald of the Resurrection. "The other Mary" is identified in Matthew 27:56 and 27:61 as Mary the mother of James and Joseph, a member of the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee. That women are the first witnesses is historically striking in a culture that did not admit women's testimony in court — a detail so countercultural that apologists since the Fathers have taken it as strong evidence for the account's authenticity (cf. Origen, Contra Celsum II.59). Their purpose is "to see the tomb" (θεωρῆσαι τὸν τάφον) — they come as mourners, not yet as believers in resurrection. Their transformation from grief to proclamation is the arc these verses begin.

Matthew 28:2 — Earthquake, Angel, Stone Matthew alone among the Evangelists recounts this earthquake (σεισμὸς μέγας, "great earthquake"), mirroring the earthquake at the moment of Jesus' death (27:51). Together, the two seismic events form a literary and theological bracket: creation shook when the Son of God died; it shakes again when death is undone. The earthquake is not the cause of the stone's removal but the sign accompanying divine action — a theophanic convention rooted deep in Old Testament tradition (cf. Exodus 19:18; 1 Kings 19:11–12; Psalm 114:7).

The angel "descended from the sky (οὐρανοῦ)" — the direction of descent is deliberate, stressing divine agency. This is not a human intermediary but a heavenly messenger whose very arrival restructures the scene. Critically, Matthew says the angel rolled away the stone and sat on it — a posture of sovereign authority, not merely a practical act. The stone had been sealed with Roman authority (27:66); the angel's casual installation upon it is an implicit judgment: every human power arrayed against the Resurrection has been rendered a footstool. The Catechism affirms that Christ "rose by his own power" (CCC 649) — the stone is not rolled away to let Jesus out, but to let the witnesses in.

Matthew 28:3 — The Angel's Appearance The description — "appearance like lightning (ἀστραπή), clothing white as snow (χιὼν)" — draws on the classic theophanic and angelophanic vocabulary of the Old Testament and Jewish apocalyptic tradition. Lightning evokes the Sinai theophany (Exodus 19:16) and the divine throne-room visions of Ezekiel and Daniel (Daniel 10:6). White garments signal heavenly purity, eschatological holiness, and victory over death. The same imagery clothes the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:2), suggesting a typological continuity: as the disciples glimpsed Christ's divine glory on Tabor, now at the tomb the glory of God's vindication blazes outward through his messenger. This is the aesthetics of the eschaton breaking into history.

Matthew 28:4 — The Guards Collapse The guards — Roman soldiers posted at the request of the Pharisees to prevent any staged "resurrection" — become, with bitter irony, the first witnesses of the Resurrection's power, even as they are the last to proclaim it (28:11–15). They "shook" (ἐσείσθησαν, the same root as σεισμός in v. 2) — they become part of the earthquake, trembling in resonance with creation's convulsion. They "became like dead men" (ὡσεὶ νεκροί): those who came to guard the dead are themselves reduced to a deathlike stupor. The reversal is total. St. Jerome notes the exquisite justice: "The keepers of the dead are themselves made as dead" (Commentary on Matthew IV.28). Fear before divine theophany in Scripture is not mere fright but the creaturely confrontation with the absolute — what Rudolf Otto would later call the mysterium tremendum. The women, by contrast, will receive comfort (v. 5); the guards, whose allegiance is to the powers of this age, receive only collapse.

Catholic tradition reads these four verses as a densely layered theological overture to the central mystery of the faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Resurrection is "not a return to earthly life" but an entry into "a different sphere of being" (CCC 646) — and this passage stages precisely that ontological rupture. The angel does not announce something that is about to happen; he reveals what has already, invisibly, occurred inside the sealed tomb. This is why Catholic liturgical tradition, especially the ancient Exsultet of the Easter Vigil, celebrates the Resurrection as a cosmic event reordering creation: "This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin."

The "first day of the week" carries profound ecclesiological weight. St. Justin Martyr (First Apology 67, c. 155 AD) records that Christians already gathered "on the day called Sunday" for the Eucharist, explicitly linking this practice to the day of Resurrection. The Second Vatican Council (Sacrosanctum Concilium 106) calls Sunday the "original feast day," the weekly Paschal celebration. Every Sunday Mass is, in miniature, the scene Matthew describes: the community gathered at dawn before the opened tomb.

The two Marys also carry Marian-ecclesiological significance in the Catholic reading. St. Ambrose and later patristic interpreters see in Mary Magdalene's faithful vigil an image of the Church's unwavering contemplation of Christ even in desolation. Pope St. John Paul II, in Mulieris Dignitatem (§16), reflected that Jesus entrusted the first announcement of his Resurrection to women, making them "the first witnesses of the Risen Christ" — a dignity the Church honors and has never minimized.

The rolling away of the stone is treated by St. Augustine (Sermon 233) as a figura of the opening of the Scriptures: just as the stone sealed and obscured the mystery, the letter of the Law concealed Christ until his Resurrection "rolled back" its opacity, revealing its full meaning.

Contemporary Catholics can be tempted to reduce the Resurrection to an interior, spiritual consolation — a feeling that "love wins" — rather than the objective cosmic event Matthew insists upon with his earthquake, his angel, his collapsed soldiers. These verses are a corrective. The Resurrection happened to the world, not merely to the disciples' hearts. This matters practically: when Catholics are shaken by the convulsions of their own lives — illness, loss, moral failure, ecclesial scandal — Matthew's earthquake reminds us that the trembling of the old order is not the final word. The stone has already been rolled back; the power that sealed it has already been made like dead men.

The women's faithful presence at dawn, even with no expectation of resurrection, models the spirituality of Holy Saturday: continuing to show up, to "see the tomb," even when hope seems entombed. This is the pattern of the Daily Office, the daily Rosary, the regular confession — fidelity in the dark that positions us, like the two Marys, to receive the angel's announcement when it comes.