Page:PracticalCommentaryOnHolyScripture.djvu/753

 On the  following  day,  the  chief  priests  and  the  Pharisees went to  Pilate  and  said:  “Sir,  we  have  remembered  that  that seducer said,  while  He  was  yet  alive: ‘After  three  days  I will  rise again.’ Command,  therefore,  the  sepulchre  to  be  guarded  until the third  day,  lest  His  disciples  come  and  steal  Him  away,  and say to  the  people:  ‘He  is  risen  from  the  dead’.”  Pilate  gave them guards to  watch  the  sepulchre,  and  they  moreover  sealed the stone.

The Soul  of  Jesus  Christ,  immediately  after  His  Death,  went  to Limbo,  to  announce  to  the  spirits  of  the  just  the  glad  tidings  that  the work of  Redemption  was  accomplished,  and  that  they  would  soon ascend with  Him  to  heaven. It was  for  this  reason  that  our  Lord  said to the  penitent  thief:  “This  day  shalt  thou  be  with  Me  in  paradise.” Our Lord’s  Divinity  was  inseparably  joined  to  His  Soul.

Our Paschal  Lamb.  Our  Divine  Saviour,  crucified  on  the  Jewish paschal feast,  is  the  true  Paschal  Lamb;  and  therefore  St.  Paul  says: “Christ, our  Pasch,  is  sacrificed”  (i  Cor.  5,  7). No bone  of  the  typical lamb might  be  broken  (Old  Test.  XXXIII),  and  this  law  was  meant  to typify  that  no  bone  would  be  broken  of  the  true  Paschal  Lamb,  our Redeemer. This, as  you  have  read,  came  to  pass.

The Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus.  God  did  not  suffer  the  bones  of  His crucified Son  to  be  broken;  and  in  order  that  no  one  might  attribute this fact  to  chance,  He  announced,  fifteen  hundred  years  before,  by