Saturday in the Octave of Easter, April 6, 2024

Mark 16, 9–15

When Jesus had risen, early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. She went and told his companions who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe.  After this he appeared in another form to two of them walking along on their way to the country. They returned and told the others; but they did not believe them either.  But later, as the Eleven were at table, Jesus appeared to them and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised. He said to them, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”

The final chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel contains two accounts of the Resurrection and the events that occurred after it.  The first part of these runs from verse 1 to verse 8, and seems to leave the reader hanging because it is evidently not complete: the women who come to the tomb of Jesus see an angel, hear the angel announce the Resurrection, and then flee without telling anyone.  The second part, which we have here as today’s Gospel Reading, is probably not by St. Mark.  It is certainly of great antiquity, though, since it was included in the earliest Latin translations of the Gospel, which were made before the year 100.  When St. Jerome came to produce the Vulgate Bible, he translated many biblical books from Greek and Hebrew, but took the old Latin translations of the Gospels and only made corrections in including them.  If we compare Mark 1-8 with 9-20, the latter provides more details than the former and does finish the Gospel in a satisfying way for the reader.  My thought is that the abrupt ending to the first part of the chapter signals that either the rest of the Gospel was lost (as though the final page of a book had been ripped out) or that Mark had been interrupted in his writing, possibly by the death of the source for his Gospel, St. Peter, and the subsequent persecution which may have caused him to leave Rome suddenly.  We can also recall that Mark would have written his Gospel on a scroll of papyrus, and it could have gotten torn towards the end.  I wonder if one of those early Christians who had heard the Gospel read out in the time after it had been written wrote out what he remembered when he later found that the end had been lost.  At any rate, the Church has always held this second part of the chapter to be divinely inspired and canonical.  

“When Jesus had risen, early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene.”  This is a very sober, matter-of-fact statement of a staggering event.  It is also a very careful statement: the author does not elaborate or add anything that might be speculative on his part.  But how the pen of the author must have shaken as he wrote this!  He is writing of seeming impossibilities, of a man rising from the dead and appearing to a living woman as one who is also alive, again.  If only we could hear him speak this and see his expression as he does!  You and I have grown up with the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  This was not so for the early Christians.  The Resurrection was so incredible, in fact, that St. Paul learned to bring this in only gradually when speaking to the Gentiles about Jesus (cf. Acts 17, 32).

But the writer is emphatic about what happened and points to a specific witness, Mary Magdalene, “out of whom he had driven seven demons”.  He does not say merely, One of the women, nor, Mary, nor does he even halt at giving the name of the town from which she came; he tells of what Jesus had done for her.  It is as though he is pointing directly to her in a crowd.  He expects those for whom he is writing to know her or at least to know about her and the details of her story.

“She went and told his companions who were mourning and weeping.”  We are not told anywhere else that the Lord’s companions — his Apostles and disciples — were “mourning and weeping”.  John 20, 19 relates that the Apostles were hiding in a house “for fear of the Jews” following the Lord’s Passion and Death, leaving us to imagine that their primary reaction to his Death was of fear for themselves and only secondarily of grief for Jesus.  This detail in Mark helps us to see that the Apostles had gathered together in a house, almost certainly the one in which they had just eaten the Last Supper, in order to have a secure place in which to grieve and mourn.

“When they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe.”  This confirms what is found in Luke 24, 11: “And these words seemed to them as idle tales: and they did not believe them.”  This does not contradict the Gospel of John’s account in which Peter and John ran to the tomb and saw and believed, for the words in Mark are spoken in a general way.  That is, many of the Apostles and disciples failed to believe Mary Magdalene’s report, but not all.  We recall, for instance, how Thomas doubted the other Apostles when they told him that they had seen Jesus.

“After this he appeared in another form to two of them walking along on their way to the country. They returned and told the others; but they did not believe them either.”  This refers to the two disciples who walked to Emmaus, in Luke 24, 13-32.  Luke tells us that the Apostles did consider to be true the news from these two disciples, but he may also have been generalizing for many of the disciples had by then come to the house to find out what was actually happening, and they did not believe at first.

“But later, as the Eleven were at table, Jesus appeared to them and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised.”  This accords with Luke 24, 37-44, in which the Lord eats a piece of fish to show them that he is indeed alive.

“Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”  It might seem odd to hear the Lord reproaching the Apostles for their unbelief and then in the next verse to hear him commanding them to go out to the whole world to proclaim the Gospel, but what could be more convincing than testimony from those who had at first not believed and had to be convinced themselves?

We see in these verses a summary of the Lord’s appearances after he rose from the dead, and how various Apostles and disciples received the news.  We ought to try, each Easter, to forget everything we know about Jesus and to try to hear of the Resurrection for the first time.  We can refresh our faith in this way.  Faith ought to be fresh, as though we had just come to believe, for then it is stronger, more vibrant, and more zealous.