The morning air still carried the scent of burial spices, but something had shifted in the world. Two women ran through the gray-blue light of dawn, their feet barely touching the Jerusalem road, their hearts caught between terror and an impossible, rising joy. They had just seen an empty tomb and heard the words of an angel—and now, before they could even reach the disciples, He was there. Standing in their path. Alive. Speaking their names as though death had never touched Him at all.
The gospel for this Monday in the Octave of Easter gives us one of the most striking and tender scenes in all of Scripture. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary have just left the empty tomb. Matthew tells us they were "fearful yet overjoyed"—a phrase that captures the paradox at the very heart of the Resurrection. This is not a comfortable, settled happiness. This is the kind of joy that shakes you to your foundations, the kind that comes when everything you thought you knew about the world is suddenly, irrevocably undone.
And then Jesus meets them on the way. Not in the temple, not on a mountaintop, not surrounded by legions of angels—but on the road. He meets them in the middle of their running, in the middle of their confusion, in the middle of their breathless attempt to make sense of the most extraordinary morning the world has ever known. He greets them simply, and they fall at His feet in worship. There is no theological debate, no demand for proof. They recognize Him, and they cling to Him, and that is enough.
His words to them are among the most repeated in all of Scripture: "Do not be afraid." It is the phrase the angels spoke to the shepherds at His birth. It is what He said to the disciples on the storm-tossed sea. And now, risen from the dead, it is the first pastoral instruction He gives. The Resurrection does not eliminate fear from the human experience—but it transforms it. The women are still afraid, but their fear is now shot through with glory. They are afraid the way one might be afraid standing at the edge of an ocean that stretches beyond sight: not because something terrible is coming, but because something so vast and beautiful has arrived that the soul can barely contain it.
Then Jesus gives them a mission. "Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me." Notice the word He uses—brothers. Not servants, not followers, not even disciples. Brothers. This is the language of family, of intimacy, of restored relationship. These are the same men who abandoned Him in Gethsemane, who fled when the soldiers came, who were nowhere to be found at the foot of the cross. And yet the Risen Lord calls them brothers. The Resurrection is not only the defeat of death; it is the ultimate act of reconciliation. Before the disciples can even ask for forgiveness, it is already given. Before they can come to Him, He is already reaching for them.
But Matthew, with the keen eye of a former tax collector who understood the corrupting power of money, immediately contrasts this scene with another. While the women run toward the disciples with the truth, the guards run toward the chief priests with the same truth—and the chief priests decide to bury it. They assemble, they deliberate, and they reach for the oldest tool of suppression: a large sum of money. "You are to say, 'His disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep.'" It is a story that collapses under the slightest scrutiny—sleeping soldiers who somehow know what happened while they slept—but it does not need to be convincing. It only needs to be repeated often enough.
This is the great contest that Matthew sets before us on this Monday of Easter: truth against fabrication, joy against cynicism, the testimony of love against the testimony of money. The women who encountered the Risen Christ cannot stop running toward others to share what they have seen. The guards who also witnessed the miracle take their coins and walk away in silence. Both groups saw the same empty tomb. Only one group was transformed by it.
There is something deeply relevant here for our own lives in this Easter season. Each of us stands, in a sense, at the same crossroads. We have heard the proclamation of the Resurrection. We have been told that death is not the final word, that sin does not have the last say, that the God of the universe calls us His brothers and sisters. The question is not whether this news reaches us—it already has. The question is what we do with it. Do we run with it, fearful yet overjoyed, eager to share it with everyone we meet? Or do we pocket our own kind of silver coins—our comfort, our respectability, our reluctance to look foolish—and quietly agree to tell a smaller story?
The Octave of Easter exists precisely to give us time to sit with this question. The Church, in her wisdom, does not rush past Easter Sunday. She lingers for eight days, treating each one as a continuation of that first astonishing morning. She wants us to let the Resurrection sink in, not as an abstract doctrine but as a lived reality that reshapes everything—our relationships, our fears, our sense of what is possible. The empty tomb is not merely a historical event. It is an invitation that is renewed every single day.
St. Gregory the Great once reflected that the women at the tomb were the first evangelists precisely because they had loved the most. It was not theological sophistication that qualified them for this mission, but fidelity. They had stood at the cross when nearly everyone else had fled. They had come to the tomb at dawn to anoint a body they believed was still dead. And because they showed up—because they refused to let grief have the final word—they were the first to hear it: He is risen. Do not be afraid. Go and tell.
This is the pattern of the Christian life. We show up in our grief, in our confusion, in our half-broken hope, and Christ meets us on the way. He does not wait for us to have everything figured out. He does not require us to be brave. He only asks us to keep moving toward Him—and then, when we least expect it, He is suddenly there, calling us by name, sending us out to tell the others. The Resurrection is not a reward for the strong. It is a gift for the faithful, and its first witnesses were two women who were running and weeping and laughing all at once.
Monday in the Octave of Easter — Matthew 28:8-15