"And Nicodemus also came, who at first came to Jesus by night, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound. They took therefore the body of Jesus, and buying fine linen, wrapped it up in the linen cloths with the spices, as it is the custom with the Jews to bury. And there was in the place where He was crucified a garden, and in the garden a new sepulchre, his own (Joseph's) monument, which he had hewed out in a rock, wherein never yet any man had been laid. There therefore, by reason of the Parasceve of the Jews, they laid Jesus, because the sepulchre was nigh at hand. And he rolled a great stone to the door of the monument, and went his way. And Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of Joseph, and the women that were come with Him from Galilee, following after, sitting over against the sepulchre, beheld where His body was laid. And returning they prepared spices and ointments, and on the Sabbath-day they rested, according to the commandment." - Matthew 27:59-61; Mark 15:46,47; Luke 23:53-56; John 19:39-42
There is something striking, one might say pathetic, in watching the chief mourners in Our Lord's funeral procession. We have not Peter, the first and the leader of His own, but Joseph of Arimathea, who, in status at least, belonged to the camp of His enemies. We have not any of those who had been seen with Him always, but Nicodemus, who feared ever to be seen with Him at all. The others provided nothing for the funeral; even John was occupied with other things; these provided of their best, in the sepulchre, the burial clothes, their reverent labour. There cannot but be deep significance in this; may one not call it the consecration of the layman's work in the Church? The provision, that is, of the material things and the material labour that are needful for the due honour that belongs to the Body of Christ, corporal and mystical.
The sepulchre, again, is a matter for thought. Half an hour before who would have imagined that "this malefactor" could have received so honourable a place of burial? Yet He is given, not merely a place of honour, but the very best that Jewry could provide; for it is a tomb specially prepared, in a special place, and in a special way, by a noble member of the Council for himself. And He is buried, not merely with due Jewish rites, but in the richest way that a rich and noble Jew could arrange. Instinctively one's thoughts go towards the Blessed Sacrament. No matter what insult is offered to it, the Body of Christ is now and always the object of the most lavish gifts of man. Things perishable and things imperishable, myrrh and aloes, or the tomb, alike are bestowed upon it to over flowing; and no one who understands will dream of calling it waste.
We look again when all is over. Joseph and Nicodemus have done their work and gone; John has led "to his own" the heart broken Mother; but others remain, "sitting over against the sepulchre," and looking at the spot "where His body was laid." Again we have little difficulty in recognizing who they represent. There are those whose chief devotion in life is to sit "over against the sepulchre" and to "behold where His body is laid": hungry souls, whose craving for prayer, and for union with the Lord Whom they have once known, never leaves them, yet who seem to be left very much alone, per mitted only to look at the "place where He is laid," and then to go forward and do for Him whatever their love shall suggest, it matters little what. Such souls often have the added agony of not knowing the joy of this abiding.
- from The The Crown of Sorrow: Meditations on the Passion of Our Lord, by Archbishop Alban Goodier, SJ. It has the Nihil Obstat of Canon Franciscus M Wyndham, Censor Deputatus, and the Imprimatur of Canon Edmund Surmont, Vicar General, Diocese of Westminster, England, 16 May 1918