Ambrose. Commentary on Luke’s Gospel. 10. 137
The righteous man wraps the body of Christ
in a sheet, the innocent man anoints him with perfume; we find that these explanations are
not superfluous, since justice dresses the Church and innocence gives grace. For this
reason you may dress the Lord’s body with glory so that you can be righteous too, and
although you might think He is dead, cover Him with the plentifulness of His divinity.
Anoint Him with myrrh and aloe, so that you may become the good perfume of Christ. Joseph,
the rightful man, used an excellent sheet: probably it was the same one that Peter saw
coming to him from the sky, full of every kind of animals and wild beasts, which
represented the pagans. Therefore the Church is buried with the Lord in that mystic
anointment. The anointment is authentic because the differences of all the peoples gather
in the Church, as it communicates them its faith.
Ambrosius. The Mystery
of Incarnation, 40.
Even His burial shows something glorious.
In fact, even though He had been anointed by Joseph and put in the sepulcher, He opened
the sepulcher of the dead with a really new action, although He was dead. His body lie in
the tomb but He, free among the dead, destroyed death's law and gave His forgiveness to
those who were in hell. His flesh was in the sepulcher but His power operated from the
sky. He used to appear in the reality of His body because the flesh was not the Word but
The Word was His flesh.
Cyril of Alexandria,
Comment on John's Gospel 19, 40-41
We consider Him among the dead, because His body is dead,
but He really represents Life, for Himself and for the one who generated Him. He willingly
subjected himself not only to death but also to all the things He had to suffer after
death: the burial and the descent in the sepulcher, so that every injustice was
accomplished. The evangelist says that there was a sepulcher, a new one, in a garden. This
tells us that, with the death of Christ, the return to heaven is preparing for us.
The death of Christ was the thing that precluded to the
entrance into heaven. What else could it mean then the fact that he says that Jesus was
descended into a garden? The sepulcher is new, and this represents the return from death
to life, which was new and unheard of, and the restoration against corruption, brought to
us through Christ. In fact our new death was transformed, by Christ's death, in something
similar to sleep. We live to live for God. For this reason Paul always calls those who are
dead in Christ sleepers. Once the power of death won on our nature. It reigned since Adam
until Moses came, also on those who did not have sinned, as Adam did, and we all carried
the image of Eden as he did, condemned to death by the curse of God. After a second Adam
came shining to us, who was a divine and heavenly creature, and fought for everybody's
life, with the death of his flesh, redeemed everybody's life and, having destroyed the
dominion of Death, came back to life, then we were once again made to resemble His image,
to be given a death that was new, in some sense, that does not just set us free from the
eternal corruption but it offers us a sleep that is full of hope, just like the death of
Christ, the One who renovated this path. Besides, if somebody states that the sepulcher is
described as new because nobody had never been buried there, he will be right in saying
this. The evangelist said, indeed, that the sepulcher was new, so that people would not
think that somebody else had resurrected from death: then he adds that nobody else was
placed there.
Ephraim the Syrian.
Commentary on the Concordant Gospel or Diatesseron. 2:20.
Eve represents Mary and Joseph another
Joseph. In fact the man who asked for the body of Christ was called Joseph. At first
Joseph was righteous in the fact that he was not in the number of his accusers. So it is
clear that the Lord, Who depended on the first Joseph at the time of His birth, let the
other Joseph watch over Him after His death. This was meant to honor the name of Joseph
who, as at the time of his birth in the manger, assisted Him during His entombment.
George of Nicomedia.
Homilies, 34.
(The Virgin asking Joseph of Arimathea for
help.)
Descend His body; gather that treasure of the world that is before you. Help us, we are in
need and we are in a foreign land, we are hated and opposed by everybody: they hate us and
make fun of us. Friends and neighbors abandoned us; nobody feels compassion for us. Nobody
protects us; nobody comes to help us; nobody dares to ask His body; nobody thought about
it, nobody worried about His burial! As you can see it is impossible to do anything for
me, I have been left alone, there is only a disciple beside me; I cannot refer directly to
Pilate and I cannot find otherwise the things that will be needed for the burial. We
cannot find another solution to descend Him from the Cross and cover his nudity; in fact
the soldiers stole his clothes playing dice, and they did not let Him the last piece of
clothing".
German of
Costantinople, Marian Homilies, IV
An extremely large crowd went to the funeral of the mother
of life. Everybody was surprised hearing about her sudden death and they were amazed at
seeing the apostles arriving through the air. Through all Jerusalem there was a rumor
saying that a rumbling and whirling cloud, that had just originated, had brought them to
the virgin's house, as a wind that brings rain and dew. (…) Being in the will of God
the apostles did not dare to touch the Virgin's body, because of reverence and fear. On
one hand the disciples -above all others, believing that her body was the shrine of
God, showed a praiseworthy fear of touching her body. On the other hand the faithful were
longing to be able to get a relic for their on sanctification. Nonetheless, nobody put a
hand on her, holding , as an example, the recklessness of the Jew, who had been struck
already. The apostles commonly agreed to let Peter and Paul place the body in the
sepulcher, holding the light shroud that was hanging from both sides of the catafalque.
Touching only the shroud with their hands, and not directly her body, the glorious and
extremely pious apostles clearly showed their humbleness and their fear of God. (The
apostles), worthy servants and announcers of Christ's love, venerated Christ with
extraordinary honor because of his mother and his mother because of Christ; Because of the
God who had turned into man, they served nobly the mother who had generated Him. Nobody
saw who took Him away -it was the invisible God- but in the hands of the apostles, the
Shroud looked slightly moving in the wind, in a light cloud .
Gertrude of Helfta,
Spiritual works, XLII, 1-13
One night, since the crucifix that she kept near her bed
leaning toward her, looked as it was about to fall, she put it back straight and told him
these sweet words: "o my sweet little Jesus, why do you lean this way?" He
answered: " the love in my heart brings me to you". Than she took the crucifix
and held Him sweetly to her heart, she covered Him with hugs and kisses saying "my
beloved is like scented myrrh for me", and The Lord said as taking the word away from
her: "Lean here, on me".
With these words He made her understand that all the man
should wrap their pains and their adversities, both of soul and body, in the holy Passion
of Lord, as a dry stem in a bunch of flowers.
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