🌑 Chapter 10 : The Passion According to Mark
Mark 14 – 15 — “Love That Does Not Flinch”
A Franciscan Clarean Commentary by Sister Abigail Hester, OFC
📖 Scripture
“Then they all deserted him and fled.” — Mark 14 : 50
🕊 1. The Anointing in Bethany — A Woman Preaches with Perfume
Mark opens the Passion story with an unnamed woman cracking open a jar of costly nard over Jesus’ head.
Scholars note that her act stands in deliberate contrast to Judas’s betrayal — lavish devotion beside calculated greed.
Franciscan Clareans see her as the first priest of the Passion.
She anoints him for burial before anyone else understands what’s coming.
While men plot and argue, a woman performs the first Eucharist of compassion.
Love always gets there first.
🍞 2. The Last Supper — Broken Bread and Shared Fear
“Take; this is my body.”
Scholars observe that Mark’s Greek is blunt and sparse — no flowery ritual, just imperatives.
Jesus doesn’t explain; he offers.
Franciscan Clareans hear a command to become the offering ourselves.
Each time we break bread for the hungry or share our lives with the wounded, we repeat the liturgy of Bethany and the upper room.
The Eucharist is portable — carried in hands that wash feet.
🌌 3. Gethsemane — The Lonely Yes
“Abba… remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want.”
Modern scholars call this the emotional center of Mark. Jesus is not serene; he’s terrified.
Mark’s Greek word ekthambeisthai means “shocked into distress.”
Franciscan Clareans kneel here often.
Prayer is not always sweet; sometimes it’s sweat and tears and a trembling yes.
Gethsemane is every moment we choose love though it hurts.
The disciples sleep; so do we.
Still, God waits through our fatigue until courage awakens again.
💔 4. Betrayal and Arrest — Kiss of Control
“The one I kiss is the man.”
Judas’s kiss is a weapon disguised as affection.
Mark shows the twist: violence arrives under the banner of friendship.
Franciscan Clareans see this not as villain vs. hero but as a mirror for us all.
Whenever we co-opt love for manipulation or religion for control, we repeat that kiss.
Our vow is to offer holy honesty instead — to let love remain clean of agenda.
🧵 5. The Trial — Silence as Testimony
“But he was silent and did not answer.”
Scholars note how Mark’s Jesus speaks less and less as the story progresses — his words shrink as the cross approaches.
Silence becomes revelation.
Franciscan Clareans call this kenotic communication — truth through emptiness.
Sometimes the most prophetic thing we can do is refuse the spin cycle of argument and stand quietly in integrity.
🪶 6. Peter’s Denial — The Collapse of Certainty
“Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.”
Mark’s portrait of Peter is brutally human.
He swears he’ll never fail and fails within hours.
Franciscan Clareans find grace here: faith is not flawlessness but return.
Peter weeps his way back to truth — and those tears baptize him into real discipleship.
Every denial we repent becomes a doorway to deeper mercy.
⚖️ 7. Pilate and the Crowd — Empire’s Cowardice
“Wishing to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas.”
Modern readers often misplace the blame on “the Jews,” but scholars remind us Mark is critiquing political expediency.
Pilate knows Jesus is innocent but chooses popularity over principle.
Franciscan Clareans see this every day when leaders trade truth for approval.
Our vow is the opposite: choose integrity even when it costs comfort.
Holiness votes for conscience.
🌑 8. The Crucifixion — God in the Dark
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Mark gives us no resurrection glow, no halo of control.
Just darkness and a shattered cry.
Scholars note Mark’s Greek keeps the Aramaic words (Eloi, Eloi) to let us hear raw human sound.
This is not theology about abandonment; it’s solidarity with everyone who’s ever felt it.
Franciscan Clareans see the cross as the altar of cosmic empathy.
Here, God doesn’t watch suffering from afar — God bleeds with the bleeding.
Love goes to the lowest place so nothing human remains untouched by divine presence.
🕊 9. The Centurion’s Confession
“Truly this man was God’s Son.”
A Roman executioner utters the first full confession of faith after Jesus dies.
The outsider sees what the disciples missed.
Franciscan Clareans love this inversion — truth bursting from the margins.
The Kingdom keeps leaking out of its containers, spilling into unexpected mouths.
🕯 10. The Women at the Tomb
Mark’s final scenes linger with Mary Magdalene and companions who watch from afar while the men vanish.
They prepare spices, grieve openly, and keep faith through service.
Franciscan Clareans stand beside them as our ancestors in courage.
When love seems dead, they keep showing up with bandages and perfume.
That’s our definition of resurrection readiness.
💫 11. Reflection — The Gospel of the Broken God
Mark 14–15 is the Gospel boiled down to its purest essence: God is love, and love does not flinch.
It bleeds with the betrayed,
keeps silence with the shamed,
and dies with the discarded so that death itself dies.
For Franciscan Clareans, the cross is not divine sadism but divine solidarity — the moment God refuses to be God without us.
Every time we choose compassion over comfort, we resurrect that truth.
🌿 Closing Prayer
Crucified Love,
hang again in our hearts until we learn your mercy.
Break our fear of suffering,
redeem our betrayals with tenderness,
and teach us the grace of holy silence.
Let our wounds shine as windows where your light enters.
Amen.
Sister Abigail Hester 
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