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Catholic Commentary
The Angel Proclaims the Resurrection
5The angel answered the women, “Don’t be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who has been crucified.6He is not here, for he has risen, just like he said. Come, see the place where the Lord was lying.7Go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has risen from the dead, and behold, he goes before you into Galilee; there you will see him.’ Behold, I have told you.”8They departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring his disciples word.
Matthew 28:5–8 records an angel's announcement to women at Jesus's tomb that he has risen from the dead, fulfilling his earlier predictions, and commissions them to inform the disciples he will appear in Galilee. The women respond with fear and joy, running to deliver this message—establishing women as the first witnesses and proclaimers of the Resurrection.
The angel does not ask the women to believe the empty tomb — he interprets it, transforming absence into proclamation, and then sends them to run with news that will change everything.
Verse 8 — "They departed quickly…with fear and great joy." Matthew's pairing of phobos (fear) and chara megalē (great joy) is theologically precise, not contradictory. This is the paradox of an encounter with the Holy — tremendum et fascinans in Rudolf Otto's terms, but rooted in the biblical yir'at Adonai: the fear that is itself a form of reverence and love. The women do not deliberate, debate, or doubt — they run. Their running is both the literal fulfillment of the angel's "quickly" (tachy) and a model of evangelical urgency. In the typological sense, these women recapitulate Mary Magdalene as the apostola apostolorum (the Apostle to the Apostles), a title given by St. Thomas Aquinas and confirmed in Pope Francis's 2016 decree elevating her feast to a Feast of the Lord.
Catholic tradition reads this passage as the pivot-point of salvation history, the moment at which the entire Old Testament arc of promise finds its irreversible fulfillment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the Resurrection of Jesus is the crowning truth of our faith in Christ" (CCC §638) and that the empty tomb, while not a direct proof, "constitutes an essential sign" (CCC §640) — precisely the sign the angel now interprets for the women.
St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on Matthew (Homily 89), marvels that God appoints women as the first evangelists of the Resurrection to shame the timid disciples and to honor the constancy of their love: "Because they showed great courage, they were the first to see and hear the great news." St. Augustine (De Civitate Dei, XXII) links the angel's proclamation to the promise that truth will ultimately cannot be entombed — neither Christ in the sepulcher nor the Gospel in the world.
The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum (§2) teaches that divine Revelation reaches its summit in the person of Jesus Christ, and this pericope captures that summit in miniature: word and event converge as the angelic proclamation interprets the saving act. The women's commission also illuminates the sensus fidelium and the role of the whole People of God in bearing witness — not only ordained ministers.
The phrase "he goes before you into Galilee" carries profound ecclesial resonance. Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium (§20–24), uses the image of the Church "going forth" as the defining posture of missionary discipleship — an impulse the Risen Lord himself initiates here, always moving ahead of his people into the world.
For a contemporary Catholic, this passage confronts a pervasive spiritual temptation: to remain at the tomb — to dwell in the familiar grief of Good Friday without moving into the unfamiliar joy of Easter. The women's "fear and great joy" names something real: genuine Easter faith is not serene optimism but a disorienting encounter with the impossible made real. It unsettles before it liberates.
The angel's command — "Go quickly and tell" — is not only the first century's problem. Every baptized Catholic is commissioned at the font to be, like these women, a bearer of resurrection news into their specific Galilee: the workplace, the family dinner table, the hospital room, the university seminar. The message is not a theological abstraction to be pondered quietly; it is news to be run with.
Practically: examine where you have been "staying at the tomb" in your spiritual life — rehearsing past failures, circling old wounds, confusing holy mourning with permanent residence. Easter faith does not deny the cross; it moves through it. Ask the Lord each morning: Where are you going before me today, and am I willing to follow?
Commentary
Verse 5 — "Don't be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who has been crucified." The angel's opening words echo the classic biblical formula of angelic reassurance (cf. Luke 1:13, 30; 2:10), always preceding a divine disclosure too large for unaided human faculties to absorb. The phrase "who has been crucified" is theologically charged: the Greek ton estaurōmenon is a perfect passive participle, indicating a completed, abiding reality. Matthew does not let the Resurrection erase the Crucifixion; the risen Jesus remains permanently the Crucified One. This is not shame but identity — the glorified Lord still bears the wounds of love (cf. John 20:27). The angel acknowledges the women's seeking: their faithfulness in coming to the tomb at dawn distinguishes them as the first recipients of the Easter proclamation.
Verse 6 — "He is not here, for he has risen, just like he said." The empty tomb is not itself the proof of the Resurrection — the angel interprets it. Without proclamation, the empty tomb is merely an absence; the angelic word transforms absence into presence. The phrase "just like he said" (kathōs eipen) is a pointed callback to Jesus' triple passion predictions (Matt. 16:21; 17:23; 20:19) and represents Matthew's deliberate literary fulfillment structure. The invitation — "Come, see the place where the Lord was lying" — is forensic and sensory: the women are called to verify the evidence with their own eyes. The title ho Kyrios ("the Lord") appears here with full post-resurrection weight; the tomb is now defined not by death but by the one who once lay there and no longer does.
Verse 7 — "Go quickly and tell his disciples…he goes before you into Galilee." The angel now commissions the women as apostolic messengers — the word apostello (to send) underpins the term "apostle." This is historically remarkable: in first-century Jewish legal culture, women's testimony was inadmissible; yet God chooses women as the first proclaimers of the Resurrection, a detail so countercultural that its preservation argues strongly for its historicity. "He goes before you" (proagei hymas) uses the language of a shepherd leading his flock (cf. Matt. 2:6; John 10:4), recalling Jesus' own words at the Last Supper: "After I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee" (Matt. 26:32). Galilee, the region of the Gentiles (Matt. 4:15), anticipates the universal mission of Matt. 28:19. The return to Galilee is not mere geography but eschatological horizon: the mission that began in Galilee will now expand to encompass the world.