Saturday within the octave of Easter, April 9, 2021

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 verses used for the Gospel reading for today’s Mass were probably not written by St. Mark because they mainly repeat what he has already said just before, and these feature a different style than the one Mark uses.  Also, these verses are not found in all the ancient manuscripts.  They are referred to collectively as “the long ending”, to distinguish this ending from the incomplete ending we do find in all the manuscripts for this Gospel.  There is also a “short ending” which consists of a verse or less.  Despite the lack of Mark’s authorship, the Church has always recognized the antiquity of these verses and that they result from divine inspiration, and so they are considered an authentic part of this Gospel.  Mark does seem to end his Gospel in an awkward way.  The last words he wrote were, “And they said nothing to any man: for they were afraid” (Mark 16, 8).  This refers to the women who went to the tomb of Jesus.  We know from the aorist tense of the verb “they said” and from the testimony of the other Gospels that they did not speak to anyone until they arrived at the house used by the Apostles.  Yet, while the other Evangelists give us accounts of appearances of the risen Jesus, Mark does not.  The “long ending” was written as a way of providing a more rounded conclusion to the Gospel.  And it does this without adding anything we would not know from the other Gospels.

We see in this “long ending” the persistence of unbelief in the Lord’s Resurrection among his closest followers.  This comes from the rock-solid human understanding that in order for a person to come into this world, he or she must be conceived and born, and that all those born into the world must die, and that the dead do not return (except perhaps for brief visitations as ghosts).  This understanding might be said to be part of human hardwiring.  And so, when Mary Magdalene tells the other women and later the Apostles, that Jesus is alive, they will not believe her.  It was inconceivable to them that her claim could be true.  This, however, leads us to conclude that the Lord Jesus did rise from the dead.  If the Gospels had been written in a way that did not mention the doubts and refusals — not to say, the inability — to believe, the Resurrection accounts would sound like the endings of fairy tales and could not be taken seriously.  But here we have an account of real men and women who could not or would not believe the unbelievable, and then they did.  This would be similar to believing that the sea had turned back on itself in mid course, or that mountains had leapt like rams (cf. Psalm 114, 3-4).  We would say today that the Resurrection could not have happened because it contradicts science.

Mary Magdalene and her companions and the Apostles and other disciples were not gullible peasants who believed everything they were told.  They were practical people of hard experience who wanted solid proof of extraordinary claims.  The Risen Lord himself met their demands for proof, eating ordinary food in their sight, allowing them to touch him, and even reasoning with them from the Scriptures that his rising must be true.  The greatest proof of the Lord’s triumph over death was his triumph over the doubts and convictions of those to whom he appeared.  It was not easy for them to believe, but once they did, they taught the truth at the cost of their lives and in the face of the doubt and ridicule of the world.  

The Lord Jesus paid with his life the price for our belief in him as God, and it cost the lives of those who knew him to pass on this Good News.  It costs something for us to believe as well, but how well do we believe?  Do we do our part in passing on this Good News as the Lord wants us to do?