Struck, Healed, and Raised on the Third Day

…David too took pride in seeking out. 'In the day of my trouble,' he says, 'I sought out God' (Psalm 77:2). Zephaniah too cries out: 'Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth' (Zephaniah 2:3). For once he is found, he lifts up the humble, raises them from the earth, frees them from corruption, and makes them higher than the high.

He found the one whose finding the excellent prophet Hosea set out for us: 'In the day of their trouble they will rise at dawn to seek me, saying: Let us go and return to the Lord our God, for he has struck us and he has healed us; he will strike us and bind up our wounds; he will make us whole after two days, and on the third day we shall rise up before him, and we shall press on to know the Lord; as a ready dawn we have found him, and he will come to us like the early and the late rain upon the earth' (Hosea 5:15–6:3).

Here, then, summon the Jew to judgment for me; bring the ungrateful man to court. Read the prophet and take the book in your arms. Let what is his own be brought against him: it stands written in his keeping, even if it has been fulfilled in mine. So I ask for the meaning of the prophetic words. Show, if you can, how and when it has come to pass in your case. That you were struck, you yourselves admit and we can see; but I do not see your healing, I do not behold your cure. On the contrary, the wound is inflamed, the disease has grown worse, and the sickness, given up as hopeless, has run on toward death.

Since, then, you cannot offer proof of the prophecy, I myself will interpret the prophetic word. I set forth the time, I point out the place, and I call the whole creation to bear witness, not to my words but to the Lord's divine wonders.

God struck us, then, when he condemned Adam to death, when he sentenced us to eat bread in the sweat of our face (Genesis 3:19), when he ordered the earth to spring up thorns and thistles for us (Genesis 3:18), when through the first-formed man he cast the whole race out of 'the paradise of delight' (Genesis 3:23). But having struck, he healed; having wounded, he bound up. How, and in what way? Hear Isaiah saying: 'The chastisement of our peace was upon him; by his bruise we have all been healed' (Isaiah 53:5). So nothing the prophet said has proved false. What follows shows it most of all: 'He will strike us and make us whole after two days, and on the third day we shall rise' (Hosea 6:1–2).

Do you remember the time when you crucified Christ, when you saw Life hanging on the tree and did not believe (Deuteronomy 28:66)? Do you recognize the drama you acted out, and the wonders of that drama, when Christ was lifted up naked on the cross as if to a wedding? Having no sin, he needed no garment; he was without blemish and had no need to hide; nothing about him was shameful, for he himself shows what is seemly. Yet creation could not bear the lightning flashes of the Lord's beauty: light overcame light, and sun gave way to Sun, the sun the eye sees to the Sun the mind knows, the sun that runs its course to him who is present everywhere, the sun that keeps its place to him who is beyond all place, the sun that sets to him who never sets, the sun that brings on the night to him who fixed the bounds of night and day.

Then it was night, for darkness covered the whole earth (Matthew 27:45); but day ran its course again from the ninth hour until evening; then night followed the day by the law set over it, and day in turn succeeds the night. So the course of two days ran in order, and the term of the prophecy reached its end: 'He will make us whole after two days' (Hosea 6:2).

Then what follows also reached its end: 'On the third day,' it says, 'we shall rise' (Hosea 6:2). For Christ rose, and we rose with him. The liberator of the dead came up from the dead, and our race came back to life, since, as the inspired Paul says, 'As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive' (1 Corinthians 15:22). This tomb is witness: the joy of the living, the comfort of the dead. This stone is witness, which was rolled away and rolled over all the idols of the demons; and not only rolled them over, but crushed them, ground them to powder, winnowed them with the winnowing fork of the cross, and blew them from the earth 'like chaff from a threshing floor and like smoke from a chimney' (Hosea 13:3) by the blast and rushing of the Spirit.

These women are witnesses, who in place of the women of long ago bring to the Bridegroom, every day and night, ointments for the senses and for the spirit. The white-robed priest is witness, the angel of the church, crying out to them: 'Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified' (Matthew 28:5; Mark 16:6). But do you ask about the hour? For it says: 'As a ready dawn we shall find him' (Hosea 6:3). Luke can tell you this too: 'On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, bringing… (Luke 24:1)