I’ve always taken comfort from Mark’s Gospel. That the Apostles could be that clueless and cowardly, yet be the ones chosen by Jesus, gives the rest of us hope.
I love it too. One of the neat things about John Mark is that he worked as a scribe/clerk at various times to Peter, Luke, Barnabas, and Paul. Mark's Gospel is the oldest, and he probably wrote it more or less how Peter himself explained what happened directly to him. So, in some ways it might well be "St. Peter's Gospel" too.
“This is a ‘Good Friday Gospel’ through and through.” Yes!! This morning I brewed my coffee, prayed for focus, and read the entire Gospel of Mark aloud to myself. I decided “IMMEDIATELY” that when I die, I want this particular Gospel to be read aloud at my “viewing” the night before my funeral mass. I think it’s that important to be read from beginning to end. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you Fr Casey for highlighting this great approach and perspective!
Thank you Father Casey, I had to take the day off work to nurse an injury, here I am at 5:45 AM caffeinated and ready to start in on The Gospel of Mark!
A great explanation of Mark's Gospel, my second favorite next to John's. Thanks Father Casey. I love the parable of the Sower and the importance that Mark gives it, also.
These Gospel videos are just excellent. Presented with clarity and an inviting sense of sharing your knowledge of the WORD made flesh. What a joy to discover them on the Sunday of the WORD!! Thank you sonmuch. Be assured of my prayers. Fr PJ
I loved this, thank you. I did a bit of uni study about the synoptic problem and the whole debate about when each Gospel was written. It’s interesting, but it does get you used to thinking of Mark as basically a first draft of Matthew and Luke. It’s nice to hear it on its own terms like this.
Of all the traits that stymie our relationship with Christ, it is our tendency to be complacent in our faith that is one of the most pernicious obstacles. Mark's Gospel is a much needed corrective to that lax mentality.
Fun facts: Mark was the first Gospel written, followed by Matthew, then Luke along with Acts, and then John (much later). The writers of Matthew and Luke likely knew of and borrowed from Mark’s Gospel and another synoptic document scholars call “Q.” As the good father says, each Gospel had a point of view and message that was fitting for the unique times in which they were written. Greco-Roman culture at the time they were written was far less than hospitable for members of “the Way,” so a message of deliverance had particular resonance regardless of which Gospel was being read.
I was listening to Bible in a Year by Fr. Mike Schmitz and when the Gospel of Mark came around, I was telling to myself, "dude, please slow down." 😂 But thanks to Fr. Casey for explaining the theological significance of it's pace.
"Duh-sciples" lol. I've definitely wondered about the disciples (all of them) from time to time. They frequently seemed to be very surprised at what Jesus could do and what he knew. Maybe it's simpler for us nowadays, because we have the benefit of looking back on history where as they were living it.
Jesus confrontation with demonic forces in Mark gives me an assurance that evil may persistently fight against good but God's kingdom will always triumph.
I aways looked at Mark as the revolutionary Gospel. But I really like Father Casey’s points here, as well! I’d love for you to continue this series with more books of Scripture, Father!
Dear Father Casey, of all your videos (which I always enjoy) these four are easily, IMO, the most important and exceptional. I thought I was fairly well versed in the New Testament, but they have completely revved up my understanding of the Gospels. I am only surprised that in fifty years of adult Catholic life, I have never come across any book, article, retreat master or spiritual director who presented this limpid, illuminating characterisation of the four Gospels! (Did you have a source that you could recommend?) You should use this material widely, to diverse audiences, including for training catechists, homilists and even theologians, who tend to burrow deeply into individual themes or episodes of the Gospels and never offer this inclusive, clarifying panorama!
Im reading Mark now. What stood at for me is that Jesus was disappointed that he was rejected in his home town.I thought it showed the human aspect of him. You would think he would know the result of his visit to Nazareth ahead of time, instead of being let down.
Still wondering if the rich man and the naked fugitive in Mark are the same person... What if the rich man contemplated Jesus' request and went through with it by giving up everything but a single piece of fabric and followed Him? That's the biggest mystery of this Gospel in my opinion.
I love your videos, and regularly use them in my high school teaching. Sadly, a seven minute video that’s exclusively talking to the camera won’t work. I’m sad that the production quality has gone down.
A private fun tidbit about the gospel of Mark is that I'm pretty sure it was meant to be read out loud, to a group of listeners. I suspect that this is because the author was recounting Peter's oral tradition of telling the gospel before he was martyred. In that setting I found it a little surprising how many times people actually laugh out loud. Especially about the parts where Jesus eventually tells people to shut up and don't tell anyone what I did for you! 😏
"A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, 52 he fled naked, leaving his garment behind." Mark 14:51-52(NIV) "The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again"." Jesus pissed at a plant for not bearing fruit OUT OF SEASON. Jesus was no botanist, that's for sure.
The fig tree story has symbolic value. The fig tree, being a symbol of Israel, represents it. It's also about humans not producing good fruit, which will result in damnation.
@tyrannosauruszeppelin2205 You can try to justify the bible's weirdness as much as you want just realize that your holy book *IS REALLY WEIRD* to the rest of us
@@Cajek2 It IS weird and alarming as it should be; the way to salvation isn't all dilly-dally. However, if go deeper into theology, you realise that it's the greatest masterpiece ever written.
@@Cajek2 So you won't listen to any explanation of the text. Have you even read or considered what I wrote? Do you really think this obviously peculiar passage has no deeper explanation at all? Do you really think you can divorce the Bible from all it's cultural context? Apparently, you've already made up your mind. Very open-minded. And by the way, putting words in all caps doesn't make your ''point'' appear to be better than it is.
By having a personal relationship with Jesus, you can ask Him your questions. He is humble and his yoke is light. He will give you peace and never leave you. Since you have watched a video of the Gospels and learned a passage from the Bible, you must be looking for Him. Knock on the door and it will be opened.
It is interesting that you say Mark is a more human gospel and also more detailed (albeit covering fewer events), since from a purely secular academic standpoint it is the earliest written and most historically reliable Gospel. It was written only decades after Jesus' death, and seems to incorporate many eyewitness accounts. It even anonymizes certain figures, the way modern documentaries might "change names to protect the innocent" - such is the proximity of Mark to history! John is also considered reliable, and might have been written by an eye witness, albeit many years later. Matthew and Luke are not unreliable - after all they are revisions of Mark, a reliable source - but their additions to Mark came later and introduce both internal and external inconsistency to Mark's tight and grounded narrative. The later synoptics tell us more about Early Christianity than they do about the life of Jesus Himself. This shouldn't affect your faith - I'm just giving the secular academic perspective. The writers of Luke and Matthew were not liars, they just lived later. You could easily write an account of your parents' lives, with minimal embellishment. Writing an account of your grandparents' lives would be harder, and your great grandparents harder still.
@davethesid8960 That's not really the point. Luke and Matthew were both written nearly one hundred years after the death of Jesus, whereas Mark was written only thirty years after the death of Jesus. John seems to have been written by an eyewitness near the end of his life, after having had years to reflect. It reflects common practices of the day that we would today call embellishments, but are not dishonest. It was common in those days for writers to imagine what a historical figure would have said to prove a particular point. The Johanine writer probably met Jesus, and certainly knew people who knew Jesus, but he wasn't taking notes and copying down exactly what Jesus said as it happened. If you're a decent writer, you can imagine what someone you knew 50 years ago might have said.
@@Syndie77-gk4xk What are you talking about? John is the latest of the four, and he wrote his gospel around 90. Also, I wouldn't call it embellishment but a deeper understanding of theology. What do you mean by "would have said"? Their narrative is a record of historical events that they experienced firsthand. What I believe they did is take notes throughout only to compile and extend on them later.
@@davethesid8960 @davethesid8960 Perhaps you have a better memory than me. Certainly, ancient people had generally better recall than people today (as they relied heavily on rote memorization for the transmission of basic, day to day information). But I can't transcribe, from memory, a sermon I heard three weeks ago without resorting to a lot of educated guesses about what I think the Pastor probably said given what I know about him and the belief system he espouses. I think even an early Christian who knew Jesus personally and would have committed many of His sayings to memory would struggle to reproduce events and discourses exactly as they happened decades after the fact. What's more, to try and do so (in a modern journalistic manner with direct quotes) isn't how the gospel writers would have approached history. Much of John is written as philosophical dialogue advancing theological points - as a historian, it's generally accepted that the Johannine dialogues are accurate representations of what Jesus would have said during His life, but they're unlikely to be literal transcriptions of actual conversations. There is no need to be defensive, the Gospels offer differing accounts of the same events, such that they can't all be equally accurate from a literal historical standpoint. The feeding of the 5000 can't have happened both in a deserted place and in the major fishing hub of Bethsaida. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, it just means our two witnesses remember the same event differently, or in the case of the Synoptics, an embellishment was made to Mark because of some outside source or other reason we don't know.
@@Syndie77-gk4xk I would suggest you don't rely too much on what dates people claim for the Gospel accounts. There is no reason to think that Luke and Matthew were written 100 years later. You are aware that writing things down had been an important part of their culture for thousands of years? It's more likely things were being written down from the start of Jesus' ministry. Speculating about authorship is fun but you are not very good at it. Let me share my opinions. According to John was written first, but published last. It was written by Lazarus and then given a seal of approval by John. That's why it has the strange ending stuck on it. Matthew was written by Matthew. Mark was written by John Mark. Luke was written by Luke. Matthew and John were written during Jesus' ministry. However Matthew was published first and John was not published until much later, probably after Lazarus died... Again. John Mark was written last, even after Luke's investigation. That's why Mark is so short and brief, because Peter was recalling things from memory and John Mark was taking notes.
If the friar working for the perks then truly it is unexpected. Why? Is lord Jesus Christ has takenperks for his father's mission. As a divine man he paid the for money nthe coin taken fish mouth for kings tax. But people helped through out his mission by providing food shelter and clothing. In the early church apostles were praying for people and people used to provide them with food shelter and clothing 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
I’ve always taken comfort from Mark’s Gospel. That the Apostles could be that clueless and cowardly, yet be the ones chosen by Jesus, gives the rest of us hope.
I love it too. One of the neat things about John Mark is that he worked as a scribe/clerk at various times to Peter, Luke, Barnabas, and Paul. Mark's Gospel is the oldest, and he probably wrote it more or less how Peter himself explained what happened directly to him. So, in some ways it might well be "St. Peter's Gospel" too.
Duh-ciples Lol. Thanks for the laugh!
Each Gospel is its own masterpiece.
Again, the best Catholic content on UA-cam. Thank you Fr Casey
“This is a ‘Good Friday Gospel’ through and through.” Yes!!
This morning I brewed my coffee, prayed for focus, and read the entire Gospel of Mark aloud to myself.
I decided “IMMEDIATELY” that when I die, I want this particular Gospel to be read aloud at my “viewing” the night before my funeral mass. I think it’s that important to be read from beginning to end.
Absolutely beautiful.
Thank you Fr Casey for highlighting this great approach and perspective!
Thank you Father Casey, I had to take the day off work to nurse an injury, here I am at 5:45 AM caffeinated and ready to start in on The Gospel of Mark!
Wow! I knew I loved your channel for a reason. Excellent teaching. Thank you.
A great explanation of Mark's Gospel, my second favorite next to John's. Thanks Father Casey. I love the parable of the Sower and the importance that Mark gives it, also.
These Gospel videos are just excellent. Presented with clarity and an inviting sense of sharing your knowledge of the WORD made flesh. What a joy to discover them on the Sunday of the WORD!! Thank you sonmuch. Be assured of my prayers. Fr PJ
Fr. Casey, I want to thank you for all the knowledge and love you share here. I've learned a lot from you, God bless you. (from Argentina)
Good morning Fr Casey, thank you for another wonderful lesson. May God bless you and your ministry.
This is the fourth of four I'm just hearing - great job, Fr. Casey
God bless you in your teaching Father 🙏🏻✝️❤️
Brilliant series.
A great potted commentary. Thank you, brother!
I loved this, thank you. I did a bit of uni study about the synoptic problem and the whole debate about when each Gospel was written. It’s interesting, but it does get you used to thinking of Mark as basically a first draft of Matthew and Luke. It’s nice to hear it on its own terms like this.
Thank you so mcub for this series, Father!
Of all the traits that stymie our relationship with Christ, it is our tendency to be complacent in our faith that is one of the most pernicious obstacles. Mark's Gospel is a much needed corrective to that lax mentality.
A wonderful sermon.
Fun facts: Mark was the first Gospel written, followed by Matthew, then Luke along with Acts, and then John (much later). The writers of Matthew and Luke likely knew of and borrowed from Mark’s Gospel and another synoptic document scholars call “Q.” As the good father says, each Gospel had a point of view and message that was fitting for the unique times in which they were written. Greco-Roman culture at the time they were written was far less than hospitable for members of “the Way,” so a message of deliverance had particular resonance regardless of which Gospel was being read.
Great analysis of the Gospel of St. Mark!
I was listening to Bible in a Year by Fr. Mike Schmitz and when the Gospel of Mark came around, I was telling to myself, "dude, please slow down." 😂
But thanks to Fr. Casey for explaining the theological significance of it's pace.
"Duh-sciples" lol. I've definitely wondered about the disciples (all of them) from time to time. They frequently seemed to be very surprised at what Jesus could do and what he knew. Maybe it's simpler for us nowadays, because we have the benefit of looking back on history where as they were living it.
Mark has always been my favorite. It's so real, and Jesus intense, full of purpose
Very informative. I like the explanations.
Jesus confrontation with demonic forces in Mark gives me an assurance that evil may persistently fight against good but God's kingdom will always triumph.
Approximately 1 per cent choose Mark as their favorite gospel. It is action packed in an unique way. Wonderful gospel.
I aways looked at Mark as the revolutionary Gospel. But I really like Father Casey’s points here, as well!
I’d love for you to continue this series with more books of Scripture, Father!
I will remember that Duh-ciples line for years.
Always liked Mark's gospel. Jesus comes on to the scene, gets baptized, then heads out to the desert for 40 days. Very Elijah of him
Dear Father Casey, of all your videos (which I always enjoy) these four are easily, IMO, the most important and exceptional. I thought I was fairly well versed in the New Testament, but they have completely revved up my understanding of the Gospels. I am only surprised that in fifty years of adult Catholic life, I have never come across any book, article, retreat master or spiritual director who presented this limpid, illuminating characterisation of the four Gospels! (Did you have a source that you could recommend?) You should use this material widely, to diverse audiences, including for training catechists, homilists and even theologians, who tend to burrow deeply into individual themes or episodes of the Gospels and never offer this inclusive, clarifying panorama!
Im reading Mark now. What stood at for me is that Jesus was disappointed that he was rejected in his home town.I thought it showed the human aspect of him. You would think he would know the result of his visit to Nazareth ahead of time, instead of being let down.
Mark is my favorite.
Still wondering if the rich man and the naked fugitive in Mark are the same person... What if the rich man contemplated Jesus' request and went through with it by giving up everything but a single piece of fabric and followed Him?
That's the biggest mystery of this Gospel in my opinion.
As I saw in a meme once:
Mark: Let's get down to business!
Seeing Mark with new lens.
I love your videos, and regularly use them in my high school teaching. Sadly, a seven minute video that’s exclusively talking to the camera won’t work. I’m sad that the production quality has gone down.
It is not intended to amuse high school adolescents
OMGoodness DUH-ciples. Amazing.
The series of Gospel intro videos deserve more attention than this
A private fun tidbit about the gospel of Mark is that I'm pretty sure it was meant to be read out loud, to a group of listeners. I suspect that this is because the author was recounting Peter's oral tradition of telling the gospel before he was martyred.
In that setting I found it a little surprising how many times people actually laugh out loud. Especially about the parts where Jesus eventually tells people to shut up and don't tell anyone what I did for you! 😏
Hi, can you also explain the Markan Sandwich?
"A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, 52 he fled naked, leaving his garment behind."
Mark 14:51-52(NIV)
"The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again"."
Jesus pissed at a plant for not bearing fruit OUT OF SEASON. Jesus was no botanist, that's for sure.
The fig tree story has symbolic value. The fig tree, being a symbol of Israel, represents it.
It's also about humans not producing good fruit, which will result in damnation.
@tyrannosauruszeppelin2205 You can try to justify the bible's weirdness as much as you want just realize that your holy book *IS REALLY WEIRD* to the rest of us
@@Cajek2 It IS weird and alarming as it should be; the way to salvation isn't all dilly-dally. However, if go deeper into theology, you realise that it's the greatest masterpiece ever written.
@@Cajek2 So you won't listen to any explanation of the text. Have you even read or considered what I wrote? Do you really think this obviously peculiar passage has no deeper explanation at all? Do you really think you can divorce the Bible from all it's cultural context?
Apparently, you've already made up your mind. Very open-minded.
And by the way, putting words in all caps doesn't make your ''point'' appear to be better than it is.
By having a personal relationship with Jesus, you can ask Him your questions. He is humble and his yoke is light. He will give you peace and never leave you. Since you have watched a video of the Gospels and learned a passage from the Bible, you must be looking for Him. Knock on the door and it will be opened.
It is interesting that you say Mark is a more human gospel and also more detailed (albeit covering fewer events), since from a purely secular academic standpoint it is the earliest written and most historically reliable Gospel. It was written only decades after Jesus' death, and seems to incorporate many eyewitness accounts. It even anonymizes certain figures, the way modern documentaries might "change names to protect the innocent" - such is the proximity of Mark to history!
John is also considered reliable, and might have been written by an eye witness, albeit many years later. Matthew and Luke are not unreliable - after all they are revisions of Mark, a reliable source - but their additions to Mark came later and introduce both internal and external inconsistency to Mark's tight and grounded narrative. The later synoptics tell us more about Early Christianity than they do about the life of Jesus Himself.
This shouldn't affect your faith - I'm just giving the secular academic perspective.
The writers of Luke and Matthew were not liars, they just lived later.
You could easily write an account of your parents' lives, with minimal embellishment. Writing an account of your grandparents' lives would be harder, and your great grandparents harder still.
They didn't have a motive to embellish their narrative. All they wanted to do is spread the good news of salvation.
@davethesid8960 That's not really the point. Luke and Matthew were both written nearly one hundred years after the death of Jesus, whereas Mark was written only thirty years after the death of Jesus.
John seems to have been written by an eyewitness near the end of his life, after having had years to reflect. It reflects common practices of the day that we would today call embellishments, but are not dishonest. It was common in those days for writers to imagine what a historical figure would have said to prove a particular point. The Johanine writer probably met Jesus, and certainly knew people who knew Jesus, but he wasn't taking notes and copying down exactly what Jesus said as it happened. If you're a decent writer, you can imagine what someone you knew 50 years ago might have said.
@@Syndie77-gk4xk What are you talking about? John is the latest of the four, and he wrote his gospel around 90. Also, I wouldn't call it embellishment but a deeper understanding of theology. What do you mean by "would have said"? Their narrative is a record of historical events that they experienced firsthand. What I believe they did is take notes throughout only to compile and extend on them later.
@@davethesid8960 @davethesid8960 Perhaps you have a better memory than me. Certainly, ancient people had generally better recall than people today (as they relied heavily on rote memorization for the transmission of basic, day to day information).
But I can't transcribe, from memory, a sermon I heard three weeks ago without resorting to a lot of educated guesses about what I think the Pastor probably said given what I know about him and the belief system he espouses. I think even an early Christian who knew Jesus personally and would have committed many of His sayings to memory would struggle to reproduce events and discourses exactly as they happened decades after the fact. What's more, to try and do so (in a modern journalistic manner with direct quotes) isn't how the gospel writers would have approached history. Much of John is written as philosophical dialogue advancing theological points - as a historian, it's generally accepted that the Johannine dialogues are accurate representations of what Jesus would have said during His life, but they're unlikely to be literal transcriptions of actual conversations.
There is no need to be defensive, the Gospels offer differing accounts of the same events, such that they can't all be equally accurate from a literal historical standpoint. The feeding of the 5000 can't have happened both in a deserted place and in the major fishing hub of Bethsaida. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, it just means our two witnesses remember the same event differently, or in the case of the Synoptics, an embellishment was made to Mark because of some outside source or other reason we don't know.
@@Syndie77-gk4xk I would suggest you don't rely too much on what dates people claim for the Gospel accounts. There is no reason to think that Luke and Matthew were written 100 years later. You are aware that writing things down had been an important part of their culture for thousands of years? It's more likely things were being written down from the start of Jesus' ministry.
Speculating about authorship is fun but you are not very good at it. Let me share my opinions. According to John was written first, but published last. It was written by Lazarus and then given a seal of approval by John. That's why it has the strange ending stuck on it.
Matthew was written by Matthew. Mark was written by John Mark. Luke was written by Luke. Matthew and John were written during Jesus' ministry. However Matthew was published first and John was not published until much later, probably after Lazarus died... Again. John Mark was written last, even after Luke's investigation. That's why Mark is so short and brief, because Peter was recalling things from memory and John Mark was taking notes.
If the friar working for the perks then truly it is unexpected. Why? Is lord Jesus Christ has takenperks for his father's mission. As a divine man he paid the for money nthe coin taken fish mouth for kings tax. But people helped through out his mission by providing food shelter and clothing. In the early church apostles were praying for people and people used to provide them with food shelter and clothing 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏