🌅 Chapter 11 : The Resurrection and the Road Ahead
Mark 16 — “The Silence That Saves the World”
A Franciscan Clarean Commentary by Sister Abigail Hester, OFC
📖 Scripture
“When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.” — Mark 16 : 4
🌑 1. The Stone Already Moved
At sunrise the women come carrying grief and spices, rehearsing one anxious question: “Who will roll away the stone?”
Mark answers before they arrive — it’s already gone.
Scholars love that timing; the miracle outruns the worry.
Franciscan Clareans read it as divine mischief — God solves what we haven’t even dared to attempt yet.
Grace gets there first.
Our job is simply to keep walking toward the tomb anyway, arms full of love and spices we may not need.
👼 2. The Young Man in White — Heaven’s Gentle Prank
“He has been raised; he is not here.”
Mark doesn’t give us a blazing angel army — just a single messenger in a white robe sitting casually on the right.
Scholars see a theology of subtlety: the Resurrection arrives like quiet truth, not cosmic fireworks.
Franciscan Clareans love this. God doesn’t burst the door down; God leaves a note and a smile.
The Revolution of Love moves by whisper, not weapon.
💨 3. “Go to Galilee” — Back to the Beginning
The messenger tells them, “He is going ahead of you to Galilee.”
That’s the place where it all started — fishing boats, dusty villages, ordinary people.
Scholars read this as Mark’s literary loop: the Gospel doesn’t end; it circles back to life.
Resurrection isn’t escape from earth but renewed engagement with it.
Franciscan Clareans hear the commission clearly: go back to the streets, the gardens, the hospitals, the fields — where the risen Christ still wanders unrecognized until we feed and heal in his name.
😶 4. The Silent Witnesses
“They fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” — Mark 16 : 8
That’s where the earliest manuscripts stop — mid-sentence, mid-terror.
Scholars call it the “open ending,” and Franciscan Clareans call it an invitation.
Silence isn’t failure; it’s gestation.
The first preachers are so overwhelmed they can only tremble — and from that holy trembling the Church is born.
Our own resurrections often start the same way — in stunned quiet after a night we thought would never end.
🌷 5. Later Additions — Faith Growing Footnotes
Later scribes added longer endings with appearances and ascensions, but scholars agree Mark’s original ending stopped at verse 8.
The unfinished ending means the story keeps happening in us.
Franciscan Clareans cherish that literary hole as sacred space — the blank page we’re meant to fill with our own acts of resurrected love.
Every work of mercy, every forgiveness, every reconciliation is Mark 16 : 9 being written again in the margin of history.
🌿 6. Reflection — Resurrection as Ongoing Practice
Mark’s Resurrection is not a happily-ever-after but a new assignment.
It calls us to live as people whose stones have already been rolled away.
For Franciscan Clareans, this means:
Hope is not denial but defiance.
Joy is not escape but energy for justice.
Silence is not fear but the pause before singing.
The Resurrection is God refusing to take “death” for an answer.
And the final word of Mark’s Gospel is not “afraid” — it’s us, still writing its next chapter.
🌞 Closing Prayer
Risen Christ,
who meets us in the ordinary Galilees of our days,
roll back every stone we still drag across our hearts.
Teach us to see that the tomb is open,
the world is unfinished,
and your love is on the loose.
May our lives be the next verses of Mark —
trembling, joyful, and forever beginning again.
Amen.
✨ Epilogue — The Franciscan Clarean Gospel of Mark
The whole journey — from wilderness to resurrection — is the same journey Francis and Clare took:
downward into simplicity, outward into service, inward into silence, upward into joy.
It ends where it begins — with love loosed in the world, still running ahead of us.
Sister Abigail Hester 
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