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    The Mystery of the Kingdom(Gospel of Mark)
    The Mystery of the Kingdom(Gospel of Mark)
    The Mystery of the Kingdom(Gospel of Mark)
    Ebook137 pages1 hour

    The Mystery of the Kingdom(Gospel of Mark)

    By Marcel Gervais

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    About this ebook

    This is a complete commentary on the Gospel of Mark. It includes an introduction on how the Gospels were formed, a description of Jesus early ministry, and the development of his ministry that led to his crucifixion and death.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMarcel Gervais
    Release dateSep 29, 2014
    ISBN9781927766484
    The Mystery of the Kingdom(Gospel of Mark)
    Author

    Marcel Gervais

    About the Author Archbishop Gervais was born in Elie Manitoba on September 21 1931. He is the ninth of fourteen children. His family came from Manitoba to the Sparta area near St. Thomas Ontario when he was just a teenager. He went to Sparta Continuation School and took his final year at Saint Joseph`s High School in St. Thomas. After high school he went to study for the priesthood at St. Peter’s Seminary in London , Ontario. He was ordained in 1958. He was sent to study in Rome. This was followed by studies at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. He returned to London to teach scripture to the seminarians at St. Peter’s Seminary. In 1974 he was asked by Bishop Emmett Carter to take over as director of the Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education. This Centre had been founded by Bishop Carter to provide a resource for adult education in the spirit of Vatican II. This Centre involved sessions of one or two weeks with many of the best scholars of the time. Students came not only from Canada and the United States but from all over the globe, Australia, Africa, Asia and Europe. By the time Father Gervais became the director Divine Word Centre was already a course dominated by the study of scripture to which he added social justice. This aspect of the course of studies was presented by people from every part of the “third world”; among which were Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez and Cardinal Dery of Ghana. In 1976 the Conference of Ontario Bishops along with the Canadian conference of Religious Women approached Father Gervais to provide a written course of studies in Sacred Scripture for the Church at large, but especially for priests and religious women. This is when Fr. Gervais began to write Journey, a set of forty lessons on the Bible. He was armed with a treasure of information from all the teachers and witnesses to the faith that had lectured at Devine Word. He was assisted by a large number of enthusiastic collaborators: all the people who had made presentations at Divine Word and provided materials and a team of great assistants, also at Divine Word Centre. The work was finished just as Father Gervais was ordained an auxiliary bishop of London (1980). He subsequently was made Bishop of Sault Saint Marie Diocese, and after four years, Archbishop of Ottawa (1989). He retired in 2007, and at the time of this writing, he is enjoying retirement.

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      Book preview

      The Mystery of the Kingdom(Gospel of Mark) - Marcel Gervais

      The Mystery Of The Kindom

      (The Gospel of Mark)

      by Marcel Gervais, Emeritus Archbishop of the diocese of Ottawa, Canada

      Nihil Obstat: Michael T. Ryan, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

      Imprimatur: + John M. Sherlock, Bishop of London

      London, March 31, 1980

      This content of this book was first published in 1977 as part of the JOURNEY Series By Guided Study Programs in the Catholic Faith and is now being republished in Smashwords by Emmaus Publications, 99 Fifth Avenue, Suite 103, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5P5, Canada ON Smashwords

      Cover: Though he was in the form of God he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. hut emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. Phil 2:6-7

      COPYRIGHT © Guided Study Programs In the Catholic Faith, a division of The Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education 1977. Reproduction in whole or in part is Prohibited.

      ~~~~~~~~

      CONTENTS

      Chapter 1 How the Gospel according to Mark was formed

      Chapter 2 The mystery of the Kingdom (Mark 1:1-6:6a)

      Chapter 3 - Servants Of The Kingdom

      Chapter 4 Eyes that do not see (Mark 6:7 - 8:26)

      Chapter 5 Ears that do not hear (8:27 10:52)

      Chapter 6 - The King

      Chapter 7 Judgment on the People

      Chapter 8 Endings

      Chapter 9 Jesus is judged

      Chapter 10 End and beginning

      About The Author

      Bibliography

      Chapter 1 How the Gospel according to Mark was formed

      When we study and pray over the Gospel 'of Mark it is very easy to come to believe that it was written right there, on the spot, by a reporter. There are many passages which are so lively, so realistic, that they seem to suppose eye-witnesses. Certainly eye-witnesses are involved in the formation of the Gospels, but there is more. The Gospels were not written during the lifetime of Jesus, but many years later. Basically we can speak of three stages in the formation of the Gospel according to Mark: Jesus, the Church, the Evangelist.

      Jesus

      In the years of his public life Jesus taught and did many things, so many that the whole world could not likely hold all the books that would have to be written if all were recorded (John 21:25). But Jesus was an excellent teacher. He taught his disciples well, explained things to them. Jesus knew how to write (John 8:6f), but as far as we know he left none of his teachings in writing. He depended entirely on his disciples and on the work of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26). As far as we know, no one wrote down the words and deeds of Jesus during his time on earth.

      Jesus left it to the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, to sort out what was to be preserved in writing. And this is what the Church did in the years after the Resurrection of Jesus. However, what the Church preserved of Christ's life in her preachings was not necessarily preserved with a view to writing. As her life progressed, the Church preserved what was essential to her knowledge of the Lord and to her life in union with him.

      The Church

      Preaching. The Church did not get right down to writing the Gospels as soon as Jesus was raised from the dead. The very first thing that the Apostles did was to preach about Jesus (eg. Acts 2:14ff). When we use the word preaching here, we are using it in a special sense: proclaiming the essentials about Jesus, the Lord, in order to bring people to believe in him. They proclaimed that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, the Promised One, the Messiah; that through him sins were forgiven. They proclaimed his death, his resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit to form the Church, the renewed People of God. They received into the first Christian community all who came to believe their preaching. In all this they were aware that it was Jesus, present among them, who was speaking and acting through them.

      Teaching. Preaching alone was not enough. In order to know Jesus, present and working in their midst, there was a need, especially for those who entered the Church, to learn more about him and what he said and did. So his parables were taught, accounts of different events in his life were told. In these first years of preaching and teaching, we are dealing mostly with eye-witnesses. But as time went on and new members who had not known Jesus personally in the flesh had to preach and teach, these had to rely on the witness of those who came before them.

      Pastoral needs. The first and second generation of preachers and teachers had to look after the pastoral needs of their communities. For example, when problems arose about marriage, they would recall what Jesus had said about it; when greed and selfishness sprang up, they would teach what Jesus had said about that subject. When non-Jews began to enter the Church, the leaders of the communities had to recall what Jesus has said and done which could help them deal with this new pastoral question. What gave value to their words was not so much the fact that these had been the very words of Jesus as the awareness they had that Jesus was now present among them, speaking in and through them.

      Liturgy. From the very beginning the Christian communities celebrated liturgy. They met for the Breaking of Bread (the Eucharist), where they recalled the death of Jesus. They met to baptize new members, to pray for the sick and anoint them with oil. At each of these and other liturgies some event or teaching of Jesus would be used, much as we do today. At the Eucharist the last supper would be remembered, possibly an account of the passion and death of Jesus would be recited. At a baptism they would recall the baptism of Jesus, or how Jesus forgave sinners, how he healed the sick and cast out evil spirits. Many other examples could be given. All of these words and accounts served to heighten their awareness of the invisible Lord whose presence with them they celebrated at these important moments of their lives.

      Oral tradition. In these ways the sayings and deeds of Jesus were used and remembered. The requirements of the life of the Church dictated what would be remembered. In the first years there was no real need to write down everything. It was enough that people could recount his parables and his acts by heart. It is also important to notice that there was no particular order in all the parables and actions of Jesus which were preserved in this tradition. For example, it was not especially important when and where Jesus put his arms around the little children; all that mattered was that he did do it. It was not important whether it was in Galilee or in Jerusalem that Jesus taught about marriage, as long as his teaching about marriage was accurately repeated. In this way, the truth about Jesus was preserved, but there was no real need to remember just where and when he said and did everything he said and did. What was essential to know was what he was saying and doing, then and there, in their midst.

      At first it seems that almost everything about Jesus was preserved in the memory of the leaders and the communities. Many incidents and sayings of Jesus were memorized; people could recount them word for word as they had been taught them. As you would expect, as new communities were formed, and as these oral traditions about Jesus were handed on, some changes could take place in the tradition. But it is well known that people had much better memories then, than most of us have today. Still it is not surprising that one community might remember a saying of Jesus in one way and another in a different way. Exact uniformity in every detail was not important as long as the truth about Jesus was preserved.

      From Aramaic to Greek. In the first decades after the Resurrection of Jesus the Church began to spread to Greek-speaking peoples. Most of the traditions about Jesus had been preserved in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, as long as most of the Christians spoke Aramaic. But when Greek-speaking people started to respond to the preaching and teaching of the leaders of the Church, then everything had to be translated into Greek. As you would expect, some changes naturally had to take place to make sure that the Greek-speaking people understood correctly what Jesus said and did.

      From oral to written tradition. No one knows exactly when people began to write down the traditions about Jesus. It is very understandable that the Christian communities, as they moved further and further away from the eye-witnesses and as they found that there was a danger of too many variations in the oral tradition, started to put things into writing. Parables were written down, important events in the life of Jesus were put into writing as they had been handed on to the communities. The passion and death of Jesus was probably written down quite early, because it was so important. It is very possible that people began to make little collections of his parables, or collections of his actions, his arguments with the Pharisees, and so on. But these writings were all separate. They had not all been joined together to make a smooth continuous account. This is where the Evangelists come into the picture.

      The

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