Today is the feast of St. Mark the evangelist. He was the first Christian to get the idea of doing theology by telling the life of Jesus in story form. One of his themes is the absolute failure of the male disciples to understand who Jesus is. Mark doesn't say much about the women disciples, but he has them at the crucifixion and also at the burial. The male disciples have run away. When the women go in the morning to anoint the body and find the tomb empty, they find instead a young man in a white garment and are struck with amazement. Marie Noonan Sabin in her 2017 commentary shows convincingly that "The women come out and run away from the tomb, trembling with ecstasy and they say nothing to anyone for they are filled with awe" is a better translation of 16:8 than the more conventional translation of being "scared out of their wits." She says, "Their silence is more, not less, than words."
By ending his Gospel with verse 8, Mark challenges us his readers to think how we would have responded to the "young man in a white garment" with the message that Jesus had been raised.
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