Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today's gospel shows the contrast between those who believe and those who refuse to believe. Those who believe find joy, while those who refuse are troubled. Those who believe can see things in the light of the resurrection, while those who refuse remain in darkness. Consequently, those who believe grow in knowledge, while those who refuse fall deeper and deeper into error and wind up saying absurd things.
The resurrection took place on the day after the Sabbath, and as the Sabbath is the seventh day, so the day of resurrection is the eighth, and in a way outside this world's cycle of seven days. The resurrection is something which belongs to the world to come, and yet takes a place in history. In the light of the eighth day, the light of the resurrection, the meaning of the scriptures is revealed.
So, on the day of Pentecost, Saint Peter explained how the resurrection was foretold in the Old Testament. He cited several passages. Today we heard only the explanation of the first one, which is taken from Psalm 16. When David said, you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your Holy One to see corruption, of whom was he speaking? Not of himself, for he had been in the tomb for a thousand years, and with all due respect to that holy man, it had to be acknowledged that his body had by now suffered corruption.
Saint Peter, instructed by Christ and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, teaches that David spoke of the Christ. But how could he have known about Christ a thousand years before he was born? Saint Peter gives two reasons. First, he was a prophet. All Jews recognized that certain psalms contained prophecies, such as Psalm 2, which spoke of the Messiah. Furthermore, he knew about Christ because God had sworn an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne, namely the Messiah, and had communicated this through the prophet Nathan. So on the basis of the knowledge that God gave him in these two ways, enlightening him directly and speaking to him through prophets, David could well know that the Messiah, his descendant, would not remain in the grave, but instead rise again before his body underwent corruption. Since corruption was believed to begin by the fourth day, this meant he would rise by the third day, something that later prophecies made explicit.
Few people understood the meaning of David's prophecy before it was fulfilled, but Saint Peter and the other apostles could at least point it out after the fact. Yet the first witnesses to the resurrection were not apostles, but women. On Sunday morning, the day Christ rose, these women went to the tomb, intending to honor their beloved teacher by anointing Jesus' dead body with spices and perfumed oil. There had not been time to do this before the Sabbath rest began. However, when they arrived, they didn't find him. An angel descended from heaven, approached, rolled back the stone that closed the tomb, and sat upon it. He opened the tomb to show that Jesus was no longer in it. Before dawn he rose and came out of the closed tomb, just as at his birth he had come out of the closed womb of his virgin mother.
The angel said to the women, I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay, then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. Friday's gospel will tell of an appearance of the risen Lord to the apostles in Galilee. This then is the message that the angel brought from heaven, bringing the light of the eighth day, the day of resurrection.
The women, though not fully convinced, obeyed, bringing the message to the disciples. With Peter and John they returned, as we heard yesterday, then they departed again, and at that point, Jesus rewarded the women's faithfulness by appearing to them. The angel's words were confirmed by their encounter with the risen Lord, whose light filled their souls. So their belief, though it came gradually, brought them joy.
Their feelings contrast with those of the soldiers and the leaders of the Jews, who chose not to believe. They certainly had evidence if they wanted to accept it, as Saint Augustine points out. Such amazing things happened around the tomb that even the soldiers who had been stationed there as guards became witnesses, or would have been if they had been willing to tell the truth. But the avarice that enslaved a disciple who was Christ's companion also enslaved the soldiers who guarded his tomb. Here we see one of the reasons why people lose the faith or don't accept it in the first place, the lure of the things of this world, particularly money. The leaders of the Jews, on the other hand, were blinded by pride and envy. They refused to accept the superiority of Jesus and his teaching, and so this blindness is the unfortunate result of rejecting the good news.
The gospel places before us a choice between assenting to the truth faith offers us and rejecting that truth. When the truth is rejected, it is frequently necessary to resort to lies or distortions of reality in order to justify one's position, as happened in the case of the Jewish leaders. Their rejection of the truth even led them to spend money to their own harm, as Saint Peter Chrysologus observes. When Judas was selling, the Jews bought Christ in order to destroy him. Now they spend much money in order to lose themselves, their law, temple, and country. What was their story? You are to say, his disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep. Saint Peter Chrysologus notes their malice, not content to have slain the master, they plot now to ruin the disciples. They pretend that the power of the master is the crime of the disciples.
But the story they invented is not very convincing, as Saint Augustine pointed out. If they were asleep, how could they have seen anything? And if they have seen nothing, what use are they as witnesses? The Jewish leaders became foolish because they rejected the truth of the resurrection. Fearing the light of the eighth day, they took refuge in the darkness of error and made up an absurd lie. Walking in darkness, they stumbled over and over again as they tried to get away from the light. Let us learn from their error not to imitate them. Let us instead embrace faith, which leads to understanding and joy, and ultimately to the joy that has no end.
As some of you have already heard, Pope Francis passed from this world in the hope of the resurrection at 1:35 Eastern Time. As we now turn to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass, we remember him and pray for the repose of his soul. 
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.