Reading the Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Mark will be the main gospel book to be read during this liturgical year. It is the shortest gospel and it is counted as the first to be written, becoming one of the sources of the later gospels of Matthew and Luke.
The first verse is like the title of the book: “The beginning of the good news (gospel) of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (NRSV – New Revised Standard version), and it tells us what to expect of the book: it gives us news about Jesus Christ. And those are good news (gospel), because he is the Son of God, who came to live among us.
In a way, Mark sets up the standard and the scope of the books called gospels: they are proclamations about Jesus, and they intend to lead us to faith in Jesus, the Son of God. They are not biographies of Jesus, in which we expect to find a thorough report of what he did and said. In his gospel, John tells us that Jesus said and did much more that he reported. He wrote just enough for us to know Jesus, and to believe that he “is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (Jn 20:31).
The Gospels reflect the preaching, the catechesis and the life of the Christian Communities. Jesus is the centre of the Christian life, and the Gospels were written to lead us to Jesus, so that in him we find life and salvation.
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