Catena Aurea on Matthew 28:1–7: Bede

For from the beginning of the creation of the world until now, the course of time has followed this arrangement, that the day should go before the night, because man, fallen by sin from the light of paradise, has sunk into the darkness and misery of this world. But now most fitly night goes before day, when, through faith in the resurrection, we are brought back from the darkness of sin and the shadow of death to the light of life, by the bounty of Christ.

Chrysologus, Serm. 75 [ed. note: The Sermons of S. Peter of Ravenna, surnamed Chrysologus, are quoted in the Catena under the name, Severianus.]: Because the sabbath is illuminated, not taken away, by Christ, Who said, “I am not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it.” [Matt 5:17] It is illuminated that it may lighten into the Lord’s day, and shine forth in the Church, when it had hitherto burnt dim, and been obscured by the Jews in the Synagogue.

It follows, “Came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary,” &c. Late runs woman for pardon, who had run early to sin; in paradise she had taken up unbelief, from the sepulchre she hastes to take up faith; she now hastens to snatch life from death, who had before snatched death from life. And it is not, They come, but “came,” (in the singular,) for in mystery and not by accident, the two came under one name. She came, but altered; a woman, changed in life, not in name; in virtue, not in sex. The women go before the Apostles, bearing to the Lord’s sepulchre a type of the Churches; the two Marys, to wit.

For Mary is the name of Christ’s mother; and one name is twice repeated for two women, because herein is figured the Church coming out of the two nations, the Gentiles and the Jews, and being yet one. Mary came to the sepulchre, as to the womb of the resurrection, that Christ might be the second time born out of the sepulchre of faith, who after the flesh had been born of her womb; and that as a virgin had borne Him into this life present, so a sealed sepulchre might bring Him forth into life eternal. It is proof of Deity to have left a womb virgin after birth, and no less to have come forth in the body from a closed sepulchre.