Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

May the Lord give you His peace!

Happy New Year, and Welcome to  the Year of Mark!
On Saturday, December 2, 2023, as the sun sets and the daylight fades, as the Church prays Evening Prayer I (First Vespers) of the First Sunday of Advent, the Church’s Year of Grace 2023 ends and a new Year of Grace 2024 begins. Hence the greeting –  Happy New Year!

The Church’s liturgical year unfolds with the end of one year leading seamlessly into the beginning of the next. For instan7-12):  “It is commonly accepted by a majority of contemporary New Testament scholars that Mark’s Gospel was the first to be written and that it was a source used by Matthew and Luke in the composition of their Gospels… When Christians choose to encounter Mark’s Jesus, they meet with that side of Jesus that is the simplest of the four [inspired ‘Jesus portraits’ of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John] – and the most demanding! They discover that Marks’ version of Jesus’ life centers on his death and on the meaning of suffering. When they open themselves to involvement with Jesus as Mark presents him, they realize that they too are invited to give meaning to life (and to death) as he did, namely, by radical trust in God and by loving service to others’ needs.

“The overall plan and framework of Mark’s Gospel is simple and involving. As his drama unfolds, his readers will be involved in the mystery of who Jesus is and what it means to be his follower. The Gospel develops gradually in three stages. In the first stage (chapters 1-8), Mark’s readers are drawn into a relationship with the powerful healer and preacher, Jesus of Nazareth. During this first stage no one seems to understand Jesus’ true identity, not even his disciples… In this first climax of his Gospel, Mark’s readers also learn that the way of Christ is the way of the Christian (8: 34: ‘If anyone wishes to come after me…’). Theirs too is the way of the cross! 
 
“The second stage of Mark’s Gospel (chapters 9-15) gradually reveals to its readers the concrete means of true Christian discipleship. This is summed up best in 10:45, where Jesus says, ‘The Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve – to give his life in ransom for the many.’ And that is precisely what happens in the second climax of the Gospel, as Jesus dies for his people (chapters 14-15).

“Jesus’ death, however, is not the end. For the third stage of the Gospel of Mark begins with the proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection and with his going to Galilee ahead of his disciples (16: 6-7). It is at the empty tomb that Mark’s readers take the place of Jesus’ first disciples and become the major characters in his Gospel drama (16: 8). It is as his Gospel ends that Mark challenges his readers most dramatically to respond to Jesus in their lives with trust, and not the ‘fear and trembling’ of the women! The third stage of Mark’s Gospel continues in the life of the Church, until the risen Lord comes again. 

“Mark’s narrative account of Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection emphasizes certain themes that were of great importance in the early Church. It is also important for the Christian community [today] to meditate upon them: (1) the humanity of Jesus; (2) trust as the heart of discipleship; and (3) service to others as the daily way of taking up Jesus’ cup and cross.” 

So, welcome to the Year of Mark!

May this holy season of Advent and the beginning of a new year of God’s grace draw us closer to the Lord and to one another in the communion of the Church! May the Gospel of the Lord truly be our rule of life – to the glory and praise of our Triune God! 

With a brother’s love in the Lord and Mary Immaculate,

Deacon Dave, O.F.S.
T    In Persona Christi Servi
 
ce, on November 26^th, the 33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, we encountered an end-time teaching of Jesus from the Gospel according to Matthew (25:14-30) in the form of the parable of the talents in which the master entrusts varying sums of treasure to three servants before going away on a journey. When he asks for accountability upon his long-delayed return, two show that they are ready by the prudent decisions they made about what was given to them; the third, however, fails the test. The accounting is clearly the last judgment. It involves rewards for the two servants who doubled the sums given to them and punishment for the servant who did nothing. Constant watchfulness demands fruitful action. The message: we must always be prepared for the coming of the Lord!

Now as we move into a new liturgical year, the Church nourishes us with a new cycle of readings from Sacred Scripture, Year B for the Sunday readings and Cycle II for the weekday readings in Ordinary Time. And so, on this First Sunday of Advent in Year B, we hear proclaimed another end-time teaching of Jesus, this one from the Gospel according to Mark (13: 33-37) in which the Lord admonishes us that we must ”Be watchful! Be alert!” because we “do not know when the lord of the house is coming… May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.” He warns His listeners, “What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’” The message: we must always be prepared for the coming of the Lord!

The Universal Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar (39) has this instruction about the season of Advent and its meaning for us: “Advent has a two-fold character, for it is a time of preparation for the Solemnities of Christmas, in which the First Coming of the Son of God to humanity is remembered, and likewise a time when, by remembrance of this, minds and hearts are led to look forward to Christ’s Second Coming at the end of time. For these two reasons, Advent is a period of devout and expectant delight.” Additionally, it seems entirely reasonable and beneficial to use this time to prepare ourselves spiritually for that moment – known to God alone – when He will come for us at the end of our individual pilgrimages on earth. The message: we must always be prepared for the coming of the Lord!

Advent is a season of anticipation. It recalls the hopes of our Hebrew ancestors, so often expressed during Advent in the words we hear from the writings of the Prophet Isaiah, which we believe were realized in Christ’s initial coming. It is also a season of our own future hope. That these hopes are not just wishful thinking but grounded in the reality of our faith becomes evident in a posture of moral awareness and wakefulness. The message: we must always be prepared for the coming of the Lord!

The Church expresses this Advent sense of expectation and longing for the coming of the Lord during the praying of the Lord’s Prayer at each Eucharistic liturgy when the priest celebrant adds the following words to the community’s prayer: “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” The message: we must always be prepared for the coming of the Lord!

This new liturgical year will provide us with fresh opportunities to encounter the Gospel according to Mark at most of our Sunday celebrations. A number of the Apostolic Fathers of the early Church (e.g., Papias, A.D. 135, Irenaeus, A.D. 200, Origin, A.D. 250) have identified the author of this Gospel as a certain John Mark in whose mother’s house (in Jerusalem) Christians assembled (Acts 12: 12). This Mark was a cousin of Barnabas (Colossians 4: 10) and accompanied Barnabas and Paul on a missionary journey (Acts 12: 25; 13: 3; 15: 35-39). He appears in several Pauline letters (2 Timothy 4: 11; Philemon 1: 24) and with Peter (1 Peter 5: 13). Papias referred to Mark as Peter’s “interpreter.” The general consensus among Scripture scholars is that this Gospel was probably written shortly before A.D. 70 in Rome, at a time when persecution of Christians and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman army were both imminent. Its original audience appears to have been Gentile Christians, unfamiliar with Jewish customs. 

By way of some preliminary background, Vincentian Father Philip Van Linden, C.M. shares the following insights in the introduction to his scholarly commentary on this Gospel (Collegeville Bible Commentary, 1983, pp.