A Study of St. Augustine: The Disciples Did Not Believe the Holy Woman
Giotto: Noli me tangere (1304)
"And it was Mary Magdalen, and Joanna, and Mary of James, and the other women that were with them, who told these things to the apostles. And these words seemed to them as idle tales; and they did not believe them."
...But Peter rising up, ran to the sepulcher, and stooping down, he saw the linen cloths laid by themselves; and went away wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.
(Lk. 24:9-12)
Now let us attend to what we heard today, when it was read. Today, you see, we heard more explicitly about what I also drew your graces’ attention to yesterday, the unbelief of the disciples, to help us appreciate how much His goodness has bestowed on us, by enabling us to believe what we have not seen.
He called them, He taught them, He lived with them on earth, He performed such stupendous miracles before their very eyes, to the very raising of the dead; He even raised the dead, and they didn’t believe He could raise His own flesh.
The women came to the tomb; they didn’t find the body in the tomb; they were told by angels that Christ had risen; women reported this to men. And what’s written? What did you hear? These things seemed in their eyes like stuff and nonsense (Lk. 24:11).
How hugely unhappy is the human condition! When Eve reported what the serpent had said, she was listened to straightaway. A lying woman was believed, and so we all died; they didn’t believe women telling the truth so that we might live.
If women are not to be trusted, why did Adam trust Eve? If women are to be trusted, why did the disciples not trust the holy women?
And thus it is that in this fact we have to reflect on the goodness of the Lord’s arrangements.
Because this of course was the doing of the Lord Jesus Christ, that it should be the female sex which would be the first to report that He had risen again. Because mankind fell through the female sex, mankind was restored through the female sex; because a virgin gave birth to Christ, a woman proclaimed that He had risen again. Through a woman death, through a woman life.
But the disciples didn’t believe what the women had said; they thought they were raving, when in fact they were reporting the truth.
St. Augustine, sermon 232 (extract).
FSSPX.News – 4/21/2018
