How do we account for the apostles’ lack of belief in the Lord’s resurrection? We would not call them Corinthians, who, by intellectual workings, denied the resurrection, nor Sadducees, a depraved sect who denied it. Ah, but is it not hard to believe that God is doing your business in this world? It is much easier for us to do Christ’s business than to believe that He has done ours. Not one form of human religion takes up that thought. And it was so with the disciples. They could bring their spices and their ointments, but they were not yet able to believe the mighty fact that He had been doing their business.
We think of Him as hard and exacting and watching above the clouds to find occasion against us. Their hearts had been as leaking vessels of the words of Christ, and they came as the living to the dead instead of believing that He, as the living, has come down to us, the dead. We will spend our days in penances, but we will not trust Him.
Then we see Peter in the same plight. Peter! Is it possible—he that had made the very confession on which the church is founded! When Peter had to live the confession, he failed. The one among the eleven that ought eminently to have blushed was Peter. How you can distinguish a man from himself at times—his condition from his experience! If he had known what he was confessing, he never would have thought of “the Son of the living God” as among the dead.
J. G. Bellett (from Notes on the Gospel of Luke)