Mary McGlone | National Catholic Reporter =May 16, 2015
No matter what the Gospel says, picking up snakes is never going to be part of my mission plan. Now that I think about it, I’m also pretty reluctant to pick fights with demons, so the commentaries that say Mark didn’t really write this ending to his Gospel offer me a welcome justification for avoiding those adventures. Most scholars think that the Gospel of Mark ended at Verse 8 of Chapter 16, which states that the women who discovered Jesus’ empty tomb “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”