Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew

Matthew 28:8–15

⁸Immediately they came out of the tomb with fear and great joy, and they ran to tell the disciples. ⁹And behold, Jesus stood before them and said to them, «Greetings.» And they came up and kissed his feet, and worshiped him. ¹⁰Then Jesus said to them, «Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.» ¹¹While they were on their way, some of the guards came into the city and told the Princes of the priests everything that had happened. ¹²They gathered the Elders, and, having held council, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, ¹³telling them, «Proclaim that his disciples came by night and took him away while you were sleeping. ¹⁴And if the governor finds out, we will appease him and protect you.» ¹⁵The soldiers took the money and did as they were told, and the rumor they spread is still repeated among the Jews today.

At that time, when the women heard the angel's words, they quickly left the tomb, filled with both fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, «Greetings!» They came up to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, «Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee. There they will see me.» While they were on their way, some of the soldiers went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. After the chief priests had gathered together and consulted, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, saying, «This is what you are to say: «His disciples came during the night while we were asleep and stole him away.»» "And if this gets back to the governor, we'll explain it to him and keep you out of trouble." The soldiers took the money and followed the instructions. And this explanation has been passed down among the Jews to this day.

Running Towards the Risen One: The Encounter That Changes Everything

When fear and joy merge into mission — a theological meditation on Matthew 28:8-15 for Eastertide

On Easter morning, two women run. They don't yet fully understand what is happening to them, but something propels them out of the tomb with an energy that Matthew's text sums up in a striking phrase: fear and great joy. This paradox is not a stylistic detail—it is the very heartbeat of Easter faith. This article is for all those who have ever run toward something greater than themselves, for all those who waver between awe and wonder at the mystery of the risen Christ. We will read this passage together, slowly, like unrolling a treasure.

We will begin with the text itself to understand what is happening at the empty tomb (part 1). We will analyze the encounter between Jesus and the women as a model for all Easter encounters (part 2). We will then explore three major themes: Galilee as a theological context, mission as grace received before being commanded, and the high priests' lies as an inverted reflection of the truth. Finally, we will see how all of this translates into ordinary life today, in 2025.

The most decisive morning in history

To understand Matthew 28:8-15, we must first know where we are in the narrative. We are at the very beginning of dawn on the first day of the week. In Jewish tradition, the week begins anew after the Sabbath—and Matthew plays on this very symbolism: something radically new is beginning. It is the eighth day, so to speak, the one that was not inscribed in the calendar of creation, the one that opens a new temporality.

The Gospel of Matthew was likely written between 80 and 90 AD, within a Judeo-Christian community experiencing real tension with post-70 Pharisaic Judaism. The Temple had just been destroyed, synagogues were being rebuilt, and Christian communities were seeking to assert their identity. This context explains Matthew's emphasis on the controversy with the chief priests and elders (verses 11-15): he was responding to a persistent slander, the claim that the disciples had stolen the body. This controversy is not insignificant—it reveals that the resurrection is not a matter of consensus, but a scandal that each generation must confront.

The passage we are studying (Mt 28:8-15) comes just after the angel's appearance to the women (verses 1-7) and just before the great missionary journey to Galilee (verses 16-20). It is a pivotal point in both narrative and theological terms. On one side, the empty tomb and the angelic announcement; on the other, the mountain in Galilee and the universal mission. Between the two, an encounter: Jesus comes to meet the women on the road.

This structure is not accidental. Matthew constructs here a progression in three movements: the revelation (the angel), the encounter (Jesus), the mission (going to Galilee). And each movement deepens the previous one. The angel says, «He is risen.» Jesus says, «Greetings.» And finally, «Go.» The resurrection does not stop at the announcement—it unfolds in the sending forth.

It is also important to note the absolutely central role of women in this narrative. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (likely Mary, the mother of James, mentioned in chapter 27) are the first witnesses. In a world where women's testimony had no legal standing, this is an extraordinary detail that no one would have invented to lend credibility to a story. They are the ones who receive the news, they are the ones who run, they are the ones who meet the Risen Christ, they are the ones who bring the news to the disciples. The Church is born from a race of women.

Psalm 117, verse 24 of which serves as the alleluia acclamation in the Easter liturgy, provides the background music for this morning: This is the day the Lord made. In Hebrew, yom The day is both a moment in time and a fullness of meaning. It is not just another Sunday: it is THE day, the one that God himself fashioned as a space for celebration and joy. The Church's liturgy grasped this connection very early on: each Sunday is a little Easter, a rehearsal of the first morning, an invitation to the same journey toward the Risen Lord.

Two women, a resurrected Christ, and the logic of joy

Let's take a closer look at the heart of the text. Verse 8: Quickly, they left the tomb, filled with both fear and great joy, and they ran to spread the news. This verse is a masterpiece of emotional condensation. The fear (phobos) and joy (chara) coexist — not alternately, but simultaneously.

This deserves our attention. In ordinary psychology, fear and joy are mutually exclusive. One is either afraid or joyful. But in the experience of the sacred, the two converge. Rudolf Otto, in his famous The Sacred, calls this the mysterium tremendum and fascinans The mystery that terrifies and attracts at the same time. The empty tomb is exactly this kind of experience. It is terrifying because it overturns everything we think we know about death. It is fascinating because it opens up a hope that no one dared to express anymore.

The women's running is also significant. In ancient times, people didn't run without reason—running was reserved for children, servants, or urgent messengers. Matthew chooses this verb to express an inner urgency that ordinary words cannot adequately describe. Something extraordinary has happened, and others must know it immediately.

Then comes verse 9: Jesus came to meet them. The initiative here lies with the Risen One. It is not the women who come to him—it is he who comes to them. This movement of divine initiative will permeate all of Easter theology: the Risen One is not a statue to be contemplated from afar, he is a Living One who advances toward his disciples. The resurrection is not passive—it is dynamic, missionary, relational.

The salvation of Jesus — Chairete in Greek, often translated as "Greetings" or "Rejoice" — is the same word that opens the Annunciation in Luke (Kaire, (Lk 1:28). This is probably not a coincidence. The Paschal salvation echoes the salvation of the Incarnation. The same joy that descended upon Mary of Nazareth now descends upon these two women at the tomb. The history of salvation has an inner coherence that the Greek words reveal with striking precision.

Women grab the feet of Jesus and prostrate themselves. This gesture is important: it confirms the bodily reality of the Risen Christ. He is not a ghost, not a vision, not a symbol. One can touch his feet. Christian faith is incarnate—it does not despise the body, it embraces it even in its Paschal transformation.

Then Jesus said: Have no fear. This is the classic formula for divine appearance in the Bible — Noli timere — which we find from the Annunciation to the Transfiguration. But here, the injunction is followed by a concrete mission: Go and tell my brothers. The word brothers (adelphoi) is remarkably tender. After Judas' betrayal, Peter's denial, and the disciples' flight—Jesus still calls his disciples his brothers. The resurrection is not a tribunal. It is a reconciliation.

Galilee, the place of origin and promise

Why Galilee? That is the question that deserves a real theological answer, not just a geographical one.

Galilee, in the Gospel of Matthew, is the place of beginnings. It is there that Jesus chose to begin his ministry (Mt 4:12-17), there that he called his first disciples by the lake, there that he delivered the Sermon on the Mount. Returning to Galilee is therefore returning to the origins, to the first promises, to the place where it all began. It is an act of fidelity: the Risen One does not deny the Jesus of Galilee. He is the same.

But there is more. In chapter 4, Matthew quotes the prophet Isaiah to describe Galilee: Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who lived in darkness have seen a great light (Isaiah 8:23–9:1). Galilee is already, in Isaiah's writings, a place of revelation for the peoples, a place of universal openness. It is not Jerusalem, the heart of Jewish religious power. It is the periphery, the border, the place where Jews live alongside Gentiles. And it is there that the Risen One sets his meeting place.

This choice is profoundly provocative. Matthew constructs a theology of the periphery: God's revelation does not necessarily come through centers of power, established religious institutions, high priests, and elders. It comes through women who run, through disciples without titles or prestige, through a despised region. If you feel marginalized—from the Church, from society, from yourself—this text tells you that it is precisely there that the Risen One invites you to meet him.

The mountain of Galilee, in verse 16, will echo the mountain of the Beatitudes. It is the same symbolic place where Jesus taught about the Kingdom. The universal mission of verses 18-20 (Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.) is therefore born in the direct continuity of Jesus' teachings. The resurrection does not create a new religion ex nihilo — it fulfills and universalizes what was already present in Jesus' earthly ministry.

There is also an eschatological dimension to this return to Galilee. For the Christian communities of the first century, Galilee was associated with the expectation of the Lord's return. As if the road to Galilee were simultaneously a path toward the past (the origins) and toward the future (the Parousia). Going to Galilee means entering into this tension between memory and hope, which is the very rhythm of Christian life.

The mission as a gift before it is a duty

One of the pitfalls of the Christian reading of missionary sending is to transform it too quickly into a heavy moral imperative. We must speak out. We must bear witness. We must go. This reading is not wrong, but it is incomplete — and this incompleteness can become toxic.

Let's look at the structure of the text more closely. Before saying Go on, Jesus said Greetings. Before the mission, there is the encounter. Before the sending, there is the reconciliation.my brothersBefore the commandment, there is grace. The mission is not what the disciples must do to merit the Risen One — it is what they cannot help but do once they have met him.

This is exactly what Mary Magdalene experienced in the Gospel of John (Jn 20:18): I saw it! This isn't an obligation, it's an explosion. News like this cannot be contained. What happened in the garden of the tomb is too great to be contained in a single heart. The mission is the natural consequence of love received, not of an imposed moral code.

Saint Augustine grasped this with remarkable precision: You made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. (Confessions, (I, 1). The movement of the mission is the very movement of Easter joy which seeks to be shared. It is a dynamic of love, not a dynamic of performance.

This has considerable practical consequences. If mission is first and foremost a gift, then it begins with an inner life—with communion with the Risen Christ, with prayer, with the sacraments. One cannot give what one has not received. The women at the tomb did not decide to go and proclaim the resurrection after a pastoral strategy meeting. They ran because they had seen, heard, and touched. Mission is born of contemplation.

This principle also transforms our way of thinking about evangelization. Evangelizing does not primarily mean convincing or persuading—it means bearing witness to what one has received, with the freedom of someone who has nothing to prove. The great figures of evangelization throughout history—Francis of Assisi, Thérèse of Lisieux, Charles de Foucauld, Mother Teresa—were not primarily communication strategists. They were people consumed by their encounter with the Risen Christ, and it showed.

The lie of the high priests, an inverted mirror of Easter truth

Verses 11-15 are often dismissed quickly in commentaries, as if they were a polemical addition of little theological significance. This is a mistake. These verses are a crucial mirror that Matthew holds up to his reader.

What do the high priests do when they learn of the resurrection? They don't seek the truth. They orchestrate the lie. They gather the elders, deliberate, and pay the guards to spread a falsified version of events. The disciples came and stole the body while we were sleeping. Note the irony: guards who admit to sleeping are hardly reliable witnesses. The argument collapses on its own.

But the interest of the passage does not lie in the logical value of the lie. It lies in the structure it reveals. Opposite the women who run to share the truth, we have men who run to organize the lie. Opposite selfless joy, we have self-serving calculation (a large sum of moneyOpposite the free mission, we have mercenary corruption. Matthew constructs two opposing worlds and invites his reader to choose.

This contrast is particularly stark in the question of testimony. Women testify to what they have seen and experienced, at the risk of not being believed (and indeed, in Luke chapter 28, the apostles do not believe them at first). Guards and priests testify to what they have not seen, for a fee. True testimony is selfless, vulnerable, sometimes misunderstood. False testimony is calculated, protected by power and money.

There is a profound reflection here on the relationship between institutional power and evangelical truth. The high priests and elders represent the center of religious power in their time. And this very center rejects the resurrection. Not out of ignorance—by choice. They know the tomb is empty. They don't want anyone to know it. Because if the tomb is empty, their authority collapses. The resurrection is subversive not because it is revolutionary in a political sense, but because it redistributes authority: ultimate authority no longer resides in the Temple, in the Law as they interpret it, in their Sanhedrin decisions—it resides in the Risen One.

Matthieu clarifies that this explanation is false. has spread among the Jews to this day (verse 15). This up to today is a mark of his time — he writes for a community that still hears this slander in the synagogues. But this up to today It also has a lasting resonance: each generation produces its own versions of the lie about the resurrection. Today, it's no longer said that the disciples stole the body—it's said that the resurrection is a myth, a metaphor, a psychological projection of the grieving disciples. The forms change; the structure of the denial remains the same.

The Easter rush in an ordinary life

Let's now put all of this into concrete terms. Theology is not an end in itself — it is a tool for living better, more truly, more freely.

In the inner life: The text invites us to embrace both fear and joy. If you feel fear in the face of the mystery of faith, don't suppress it—it's a sign that you're in the presence of something real. Faith manufactured in a laboratory, devoid of trembling, devoid of wonder, is often a dead faith. But fear must coexist with joy, not crush it. Seek out this vibrant tension.

In relationships: Jesus calls his disciples his brothers After their betrayals and their escapes. This says something important about how the Risen One relates to our failures. He doesn't magically erase them, but neither does he turn them into a final judgment. In your damaged relationships, this logic can inspire a way to return to the other person—not by denying what happened, but by choosing to reopen a path.

In professional and community life: The structure of the Paschal mission (receiving before giving, contemplating before acting) is a powerful antidote to pastoral and professional burnout. Many committed individuals become exhausted because they give from an empty reservoir. Matthew's text reminds them that sending forth springs from an encounter. What is your personal Galilee—the place where you first encountered the Risen Lord? Returning there regularly is not a regression, it is a source of renewal.

In social and civic life: The contrast between the women witnesses and the corrupt guards raises a concrete ethical question. What kind of world do we want to live in? One is built on selfless truth, the other on organized and purchased lies. This is not an abstract question in a society where disinformation is a political tool. Easter faith is a school for discerning truth.

In the liturgy: Psalm 117 (This is the day the Lord made) reminds us that each Sunday is a call to Easter joy. Not an obligation of emotional performance – we are not forced to be joyful – but an invitation to enter into a space of meaning that the liturgy keeps open for us, even in the gray weeks.

How the Fathers and great theologians read this passage

The patristic reading of Matthew 28 is extraordinarily rich, and it deserves to be studied at length.

Origin (Comment on Matthew, (around line 248) sees in the women's race an image of the soul hastening towards contemplation. He interprets fear and joy not as contradictory emotional states but as two facets of the same mystical experience: the fear of God's infinity, the joy of his love. This mystical reading gave rise to a whole tradition of allegorical interpretation in which Mary Magdalene became the archetype of the contemplative soul.

Saint John Chrysostom (Homily on Matthew 90, (late 4th century) emphasizes divine condescension in Jesus' gesture of coming to meet the women. For him, the Risen Christ could have remained on the mountain and waited—instead, he descends. This is an image of Christ's humility, his unwavering commitment after the resurrection. Chrysostom draws a direct application from this for priests and bishops: the pastor must go to meet his people, not wait for them to come to him.

Saint Ambrose of Milan (De Virginibus, (4th century) is particularly interested in women as the first witnesses and sees in this a divine rehabilitation of female testimony, which the culture of the time marginalized. For him, God intentionally chooses the witnesses that history excludes, because the resurrection is itself a revolution of the established order.

Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, (III, q. 55) analyzes the pattern of the Easter appearances according to a rigorous logic: why did Jesus not appear first to the Pharisees or to Pilate? Because Easter faith is not something imposed, but a grace received. The Risen One reveals himself to those who are capable of receiving him, that is, to those whose hearts are already opened by love and fidelity.

Hans Urs von Balthasar (Glory and the Cross, vol. I) offers a more contemporary reading that links resurrection with the gift of beauty. For him, the encounter with the tomb is an experience of the kallos, of divine beauty, which captivates before argument. The women did not reason first—they were captivated. Paschal faith is born of contact with something beautiful, which precedes all logical demonstration. This intuition profoundly renews the catechetical approach: one does not enter the Christian faith through proofs, but through the experience of the beauty of the risen Christ.

Liturgical tradition itself is a theological reading of the text.’Exsultet, This magnificent Easter night song carries the same tension as Matthew 28: It is the night that has purified the sins of the criminals… Happy is this night! Joy and fear, sin and grace, darkness and light — all these polarities are assumed and transformed in the resurrection.

Eastern tradition, particularly Byzantine iconography, often depicts the Myrophores (the women carrying myrrh) like the first apostles — isapostolos In Greek, they were equal to the apostles. The Eastern Church gave Mary Magdalene the title of’Apostleship of the Apostles, echoing an expression of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (apostolorum apostola). This title is not insignificant: it signifies that the universal mission of the Church originates in the testimony of these women at the tomb.

Go to Galilee oneself

Theology is only alive when it enters the body, into daily life, into practice. Here is a seven-step path of meditation, inspired by the text of Matthew 28.

Step 1: Find his tomb. Before they ran, women were in the tomb. What in your life resembles a tomb—an unresolved grief, an abandoned hope, a dead relationship? Name it without shame. It is from there that life begins anew.

Step 2: Welcome the fear. Don't try to suppress the fear or the dizziness. Sit with it. The fear you feel before God, before death, before the future, is a gateway to something greater than yourself. Breathe.

Step 3: Let the joy in. Easter joy is not a manufactured emotion. It is a profound certainty that Nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:39). Recall a moment in your life when you experienced this certainty. Return to it.

Step 4: Run. What is the urgency of your faith right now? Who are you called to run to? A friend in trouble, an isolated community, an abandoned commitment? The resurrection creates urgency—not the anxious urgency of burnout, but the joyful urgency of love.

Step 5: Identify your Galileo. What is the place (geographic, internal, relational) where you first powerfully encountered Christ? Plan to return there — on an external or internal pilgrimage.

Step 6: Listen my brothers. What does Jesus call you? After your betrayals, your escapes, your silences—what does he name you? Leave this word brother, sister, rework your self-image.

Step 7: Discern the lies in circulation. What are the Your body has been stolen Contemporary narratives circulating around you and within you? What narratives prevent you from believing in resurrection, in any form whatsoever? Identify them in order to better set them aside.

Resurrection in a world that doesn't want to believe

It would be naive to read Matthew 28 without confronting the real challenges this text poses to men and women today. These challenges are at least four in number.

First challenge: historical-critical skepticism. Since the 18th century, the resurrection has been the subject of methodological suspicion in the academic world. The philosopher David Hume already posed the problem: a miracle, by definition, violates the laws of nature, and human testimony is less reliable than the natural order. This objection is serious and deserves a serious response—not evasive maneuvers. The Christian response does not consist in denying historical criticism, but in clarifying its limits. History can analyze traces, testimonies, and effects. It cannot, by definition, judge the possibility or impossibility of an act of God. As N.T. Wright says in The Resurrection of the Son of God, The resurrection is the only event that explains both the empty tomb AND the apparitions AND the birth of the Church. Seeking an alternative explanation is legitimate—but it must account for all these elements simultaneously.

Second challenge: the symbolic reduction. In many progressive church circles, the resurrection is reduced to a metaphor for hope: Jesus resurrected in the hearts of his disciples, in his words that continue to live, in his cause that triumphs over death. This reading is spiritually appealing—but it does not do justice to the text. Matthew does not write that the women had an inner experience at the tomb. He writes that they grasped the feet of a man who was walking toward them. The bodily realism of the resurrection is a fundamental element of the New Testament that symbolic reduction cannot eliminate without textual violence.

Third challenge: the normalization of lying. Verses 11-15 of Matthew 28 have a particularly acute resonance in our time of fake news, of post-truth and algorithmic disinformation. We live in a world where powerful actors—like the high priests in the text—can mobilize considerable resources to circulate falsified narratives. Easter faith is a call to epistemic vigilance: not to believe everything, to seek sources, to distinguish disinterested testimony from purchased information. It is no coincidence that early Christianity emphasized the notion of martyr — the witness — as a central figure. A martyr cannot be corrupted because he gives his life for what he has seen.

Fourth challenge: announcement fatigue. Many committed Christians, after years of pastoral or social activism, feel profoundly weary. They have proclaimed, witnessed, and run—and they feel that nothing changes. This discouragement is human and understandable. The response offered by the text is not managerial-type encouragement (You can do it!), but a re-rooting in the source: return to Galilee. Return to the foundational encounter. The mission is not sustained by its own results, it is sustained by the presence of the Risen One. What you cannot change, leave to Christ. What he asks you to do, do with the means you have. Faithfulness is not the same as success.

Prayer: Offer on Easter morning

Lord Jesus, risen from the tomb, That morning, you saw women running. You didn't wait for them on an impassive mountain. You went to meet them, in the dust of the road. Come and meet us, too.

We are often like them — filled with both fear and great joy, no longer quite sure if what we are experiencing is real, carrying in our hearts news too big for us.

Tell us, too, be without fear. Call us brothers, sisters, after our betrayals, our silences, our escapes. Your tenderness always precedes us.

Show us our Galileo — the place of origin, the place of the promise, the place where you're still waiting for us, not to judge us, but to send it to us.

Grant us the grace to run, not out of fear of missing out, not out of penitential duty, but because we saw you and that this news no longer holds any weight in our hearts.

Protect us from comfortable lies, fear pays the guards to silence the truth. Give us the courage for selfless testimony, even when people don't believe us, even when our voice is lonely.

May every Sunday be for us that day you did — an open space, a celebration, a joy. Not the joy of those who are no longer afraid of anything, but the joy of those who know that the tomb is empty and that you always move forward.

We want to go to Galilee. Guide our steps. And if we stumble along the way, come and meet us again.

You did it that morning. You do it now. You will always do it.

Amen.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. This is the day the Lord has made — May it be for us a day of celebration and joy. Alleluia.

It all begins at the empty tomb

We have come a long way since Matthew 28:8. Two women running, a Risen One coming to meet them, a mission received as a gift, Galilee as the meeting place, a lie orchestrated as a counter-testimony — and behind it all, the simplest and most dizzying question in human history: did it really happen?

Matthew isn't trying to prove the resurrection. He's bearing witness to the resurrection. He says: women ran, Jesus appeared to them, he spoke these words, and people lied to silence this truth. It's up to you to choose which story you live by.

Easter faith is not just another intellectual conviction. It is a way of inhabiting the world—a world where the empty tomb has the final say over all forms of death, real or symbolic. A world where even the disciples who fled are called brothers. A world where the Galilee of the peripheries is better than the Jerusalem of the established powers.

This text is a call. It invites you to go to Galilee—to return to the essential, to the foundational encounter, to the place where it all began for you. And to set out again, carried by that living tension between fear and great joy which is the hallmark of all that is truly of God.

Seven gestures for an Easter week

• Each morning this week, repeat the verse from Psalm 117 (This is the day the Lord made) before starting anything, to rest his day in this Easter perspective.
• Identify someone in your circle runaway disciple — someone who has distanced themselves from a relationship, a community, or even from themselves — and send them a simple message that says: You are dear to me, I'm thinking of you.
• Take ten minutes to write in a notebook what your tomb present — and offer it in prayer, without seeking to resolve it immediately.
• Identify the following in your information environment: contemporary high priests — the organized narratives that silence certain truths — and consciously decide not to relay them this week.
• To physically go to a place that has been for you a place of encounter with God or with the best of yourself, even briefly.
• During Sunday Mass, pay particular attention to the moment of Greetings — that he be in the Pax vobis of the priest, in the peace exchanged with the neighbors — like an echo of the Chairete of the Resurrected One.
• Before going to sleep, quietly name three people for whom you ran this week — those to whom you carried the new in whatever form: a presence, a word, a service.

References

Primary Sources

• Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 28, 1-20, AELF text (official French liturgical translation).
• Psalm 117 (116), verse 24, AELF liturgical translation.
• Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to Matthew, Series XII, Sources Chrétiennes n°162, Cerf, Paris.
• John Chrysostom, Homily 90 on Matthew, French translation in Complete Works, Vivès, Paris, 1865.
• Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, I, 1, trans. Pierre de Labriolle, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1992.

Secondary sources

• NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2003. (A key work for the historical debate on the resurrection.)
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, Glory and the Cross, Volume I: Appearance, trans. fr. Robert Givord, Aubier, Paris, 1965.
• Rudolf Otto, The Sacred, trans. fr. André Jundt, Payot, Paris, 1969. (For the concept of mysterium tremendum and fascinans.)
• Xavier Léon-Dufour sj, Resurrection of Jesus and Easter message, Seuil, Paris, 1971. (Classical exegesis of the Easter narrative of Matthew.)

Lectio divina

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Lectio — Read

""Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me." (Matthew 28:10)

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Meditatio — Meditate

Jesus calls his disciples «my brothers» after the resurrection—a new title, imbued with extraordinary tenderness. And he sends them back to Galilee, where it all began, where they were simple and poor. The Risen One doesn't send them to a place of glory, but to the everyday. Do you seek Christ in the extraordinary, or do you know how to find him in your own Galilee?

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Oratio — Pray

Risen Lord, you call me your brother. This statement overwhelms me. You send me back to my ordinary life so that I may encounter you there. Help me to recognize your presence in my own Galilee. May the place of my beginnings also be the place of my reunion with you.

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Contemplatio — Contemplate

The dirt road to the lake sparkles in the morning sun, and the nets are still drying on the boat.

• Marie-Joseph Lagrange op, Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Gabalda, Paris, 1923, reprinted 1948. (Exegetical commentary, a definitive work in French.)

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