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First Article:
It was fitting for Christ to be buried, because it proves the truth
of His death and because by His rising again from the grave we are
given hope of rising again through His resurrection.
Second Article:
Christ was buried in a becoming manner as the Evangelists
record.[2254] His body was anointed with aromatic spices of
myrrh and aloes, according to the custom of the Jews, so as to
preserve it longer from corruption. It was buried in a clean shroud,
according to the dictates of becoming propriety, and in another's
tomb, because He was the exemplar of poverty; in a new tomb in which
no one had been buried before Him, lest by the burial of another there
it might be pretended and believed that this other had risen again. It
was buried in a monument hewn out of a rock, and thus according to the
plan of divine providence, lest it might be said afterward that His
disciples dug up the earth and stole His body. Finally, Joseph of
Arimathea and Nicodemus rolled a great stone against the opening of
the sepulcher,[2255] so that the stone could be rolled away from
the monument only by the help of many hands. Thus Providence
forestalled the calumnies of the Jews.
Third Article:
Christ's body remained incorrupt in the tomb so that divine power
should be manifested and so that nobody might believe His death
resulted from the weakness of nature, and was not voluntary.
Fourth Article:
Christ's body was fittingly one day and two nights in the tomb,
because that was the required and sufficient time to prove the truth of
Christ's death, otherwise there would have been no true
resurrection. The Evangelist says: "The Son of man will be in the
heart of the earth three days and three nights,"[2256] by way of
synecdoche, taking the part for the whole. Thus then, the first day
and first night are computed from the end of Good Friday, the day of
Christ's death and burial, until midnight on Holy Saturday; the
second day and second night, from midnight Saturday until midnight
Sunday; the third night and the third day, from midnight Sunday to
daybreak of the same day on which Christ rose again. This was the
method of computing time among the Jews; for them, one day and one
night signified a civil day of twenty-four hours, either complete or
incomplete.
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