The Church’s cycle of seasons is more than a way of marking the passage of time. The Church calendar also allows us to go through a cycle of readings in our Liturgy of the Word. Our Sunday readings rotate on a cycle of three years, designated A, B and C. This new year of 2015 is year B in our Lectionary. From a practical point of view, the most noticeable effect of the calendar is that the gospel readings over the coming year will come largely from the Gospel according to Mark. The three “synoptic” gospels (those which follow a similar outline) of Matthew, Mark and Luke each have their own year, with John’s gospel sprinkled in throughout the cycle. John will actually get more time this coming year since Mark is shorter than Matthew and Luke, but Mark is the gospel that will be featured prominently.
Scripture scholars tell us that Mark was most likely the first of the gospel accounts to be written, probably somewhere around AD 65 to 70. He may well have served as a resource for Matthew and Luke in writing their versions of the story of Christ.
Mark is a very active gospel. He does not include the Sermon on the Mount or the parables or other such speeches. Rather, Mark shows Jesus as very active. I had a chance to reflect on that aspect of Mark’s gospel a few years ago when I read a new translation. One of my professors from my seminary days, with whom I have kept in touch over the years, decided that he wanted a project to keep him from getting too rusty in his ancient Greek, so he translated Mark into English. He stayed as faithful to the Greek as he could, and he noticed that Mark used short, simple sentences. In reading his translation, I got the sense that the direct way in which Mark wrote provided a real sense of urgency. There is a feeling that Christ’s mission is of the utmost importance and that God was moving the events at a rapid pace.
That rapid pace is familiar, if not exactly comfortable, to each of us who live in the modern world. Yet our experience is that God does not always seem to move at an urgent pace. Our second reading today has St. Peter’s promise that “The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard ‘delay.’” That is his explanation for the line before, that “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.” We do not always see the urgency of God, so we tend to settle into a comfortable routine. Perhaps our reading of the Gospel according to Mark this coming year, particularly in this Advent when we await Christ’s coming, can be a sign to us to “Prepare the way of the Lord.” He is coming. Let us rush forward eagerly to greet Him.
Father H
