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Host
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
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Tim Gray
I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augusta Institute, and with me is Dr. Ben Akers, who's a professor of theology at the Augusta Institute. We want to do a little Bible study today talking about who Mark is, the author of the Gospel of Mark, and a little bit about the Gospel of mark. I love St. Mark. I have a special devotion to Mark. I love the Gospel of Mark. I did my doctorate dissertation on a section of Mark's Gospel. So Mark is something that's. He's a writer who's very special to me. And having worked in the Gospel of Mark quite a bit, I was intrigued by who the person of Mark was and as the author and his story and his gospel. And so, you know, one of the things about Mark's Gospel is you'll see that there's a symbol for all four Gospels. When the deacon or the priest leads in procession before the gospel reading and holds up the Gospel book in the Mass, there's oftentimes four images on that big red book. And that's classic. There's these four images that go back to the early church. You find St. Jerome, for example, who talks about this image, and it goes back to an image that goes back to the book of Revelation, as well as all the way back to the prophet Ezekiel in the Old Testament. And he sees these angelic beings who has four different faces. And these four faces of these great angelic beings become associated with the four gospels. So you probably know that the eagle, for example, is associated with the Gospel of John because he soars with contemplation like an eagle, and he has this incredible vision. And then you have Matthew, which is a man, and then you have Luke, which. Which is an ox. And people are like, well, why is Luke an ox? Because Luke's Gospel begins in the temple with Zechariah. And so you have the imagery of an ox for the animal being sacrificed as Zechariah. The priest is presiding over the liturgy in the Old Covenant in the old Temple. And then you have Mark's Gospel, and Mark is the emblem for Mark is a lion. So that's pretty cool. I mean, I think the lion and the eagle are the two coolest images. So Mark. Mark gets the lion. Why is a lion associated with Mark's Gospel?
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Dr. Ben Akers
We see, right? And one of the ways that why the early church decided to say, you know, oh, four animals and four gospel writers let's match those up. There was actually significance to it. If you go to Ezekiel, you start, you see these four living creatures and they're taking away the divine presence from the Lord from the temple. So the divine presence of the Lord is being taken away from the temple over the Mount of Olives. And so the early church saw that the four gospel writers bring that living presence of the Lord through their writings in the Gospel.
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Tim Gray
That's such a great image, Ben, because, you know, as Ezekiel is showing, the Lord is leaving the temple because of their sin and their apostasy and the way they've basically made sacrilege in the temple. And so God's spirit hovers up and is these angelic beings that take, in a sense, the kind of heavenly ark, the ark of the covenant. And they make it into kind of a quadriga, a chariot, and they bring it up and it hovers over God's people, Chebar, where Ezekiel is a captive in Babylon. And so you see them bearing the presence of God. And so this imagery of these four gospel writers, the gospels, bring us the presence of God.
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Dr. Ben Akers
And so the lion is attributed to Mark's Gospel, because Mark's gospel begins with a voice crying in the wilderness with John announcing John the Baptist, but also begins with Jesus after his testing, after the three temptations by Satan, begins with Jesus with the wild beasts.
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Tim Gray
Yeah. Mark is the only one who mentions that when Jesus is in the wilderness, wilderness, he's with the wild beasts. So Mark being the only one to mention his wild beasts right at the opening. And you have a voice crying out in the wilderness. John the Baptist is kind of crying out like a lion roaring about the good news of the coming of the Messiah. And so the idea of the beasts is the image. Right. That people associate.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Right. And that would also bring us to, if you'd like to talk about it, the significance of Mark's audience. Why would Mark, out of all four gospels, choose. He skips over the three temptations we don't have. We know Jesus is tested in the wilderness, but he doesn't give us those three. Matthew and Luke will give us those three. But Mark puts Jesus with the wild beast. And I think there's a significance to that in his. To his first century audience.
- [04:34]
Tim Gray
Yes. And I think you're exactly right, because Mark is probably written in Rome. And we know this from Eusebius, we know this from other early Christian sources that Mark, John, Mark was a secretary and assistant to. To Peter the apostle. In fact, at the end of Peter's first epistle, he mentions my son, Mark is with me, you know, so he mentions Mark and he calls him his spiritual son. He says, he's with me and we greet you. And so does the church here from Babylon. And so Babylon being code for the Jews of Rome. So he's writing from Rome when he writes the first epistle, his first epistle, and Mark is with him. And so early Christian sources in the tradition say Mark wrote down the preaching of Peter in his gospel. So Mark's gospel records the eyewitness testimony of the apostle Peter. And so you have that. And so if Mark's Gospel is written in Rome, well then why would Mark mention the wild beast then?
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Dr. Ben Akers
Because that's the lived experience of the church in the 1st century in Rome is that many of the Christians are being thrown to the wild beasts in the Coliseum and other places around the amphitheaters in Rome. Yeah.
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Tim Gray
So Nero's horrific persecution, I mean, he didn't just persecute the church, he was really demonic and he was possessed by the devil himself. He looked for ways to torture and have sport with the Christians. And you could just see the devil's desire, his hate for the Christian community in that. And so the Christians, women, children, men, were thrown to these wild beasts and devoured.
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Dr. Ben Akers
This is where we get the term for Roman candles, which we think of as fireworks. But the Christians were tied to and they would be dipped in tar and set on fire and light his dinner parties of these burning the Christians, he would tie them the stakes and send wild beasts upon them to kill them. And so horrific torture. And so Mark, recounting that Jesus was with the wild beast, really wants to show the early church that Jesus is with you in your trials.
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Tim Gray
Yeah. That we're not any place where Jesus hasn't gone before us. And so the plight of the early church being handed over to these beasts, you could think the early Christians would wonder, well, where's God? If Jesus is the Son of God and he is exalted at the right hand of God the Father, why are we who are God fearing? We're the ones being moral in this immoral Roman Empire. We're the ones who are worshiping Christ. Why are we being fed to the wild beasts? And Mark then writing mentions Jesus is in the wilderness with the wild beasts. Jesus has gone where you are. You're not alone. And that's, I think, part of the message. And that kind of gets us into why Mark writes his gospel. You know, the tradition is Mark is writing down the preaching of the apostle Peter and It seems to me that, you know, Nero's persecution of the Christians begins in 64. It's in July of 64 that Nero burns down Rome. And then Nero is going to blame the burning of Rome on the Christians and he's going to scapegoat the Christians for what he was. He did, actually. And so Rome turns on these Christians. So much so that, you know, Tacitus and other Roman writers will say the Roman populace started to have pity on the Christians because they were so tormented, they were so horrifically treated. And it's out of this persecution that's happening. And as Christians are being arrested, Mark is probably writing down the Gospel. Maybe Peter's already been arrested and Mark's writing down now to make sure that Peter's eyewitness testimony is not lost for all generations.
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Dr. Ben Akers
So do we, as we go through the four Gospels and we look at the four Gospel writers, what do we look at just generally in all four of those, how many of those were apostles and were disciples? How does Mark relate to the.
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Tim Gray
That's a great question. You know, you look at Matthew was one of the twelve apostles, the Matthew the text collector. And so Matthew writes the first Gospel that we have in the. In the order of the Gospels. And he's a professional scribe. Even though he's a tax collector, he's a professional scribe. So Jesus chooses him and calls him. So he writes the Gospel of Matthew, the fourth Gospel. And the last one written is by the beloved disciple John, who is one of the 12. He's the apostle. And then you have Luke's Gospel. And Luke writes from eyewitness testimony, but he's not one of the apostles. And Luke was a disciple of St. Paul the Apostle. And he does eyewitness testimony. He says, at the beginning of his Gospel, having followed all things closely for some time, and having written and having spoken to those who are eyewitnesses from the beginning. So Luke relies on eyewitness testimony. And so really, you have two gospels, Matthew and John, that are from one of the 12. And then you get Mark and Luke, Luke, who's a disciple of the apostle Paul, and Mark, who's a disciple of the apostle Peter.
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Dr. Ben Akers
This brings us right back to the early church. These are eyewitness accounts. These are John and Matthew eyewitness experiencing these things. And then Luke and Mark talking to people that lived these stories and really do start to see a Peter stamp on Mark's Gospel. He's the first person that's introduced to us in the Gospel, and he's the last person mentioned in the Gospel.
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Tim Gray
That's such an important point because a lot of people probably don't know this. But in ancient Greco Roman writing, if you were writing like Thucydides, who's a historian, if you're writing about history that you didn't see, you need to have eyewitnesses. Otherwise your history was considered invalid. And you would show who your eyewitness was. If you were getting an account from an eyewitness, you would begin the account by naming that eyewitness and you would end the account by naming that eyewitness. So the fact that Peter is the first person named and the last person named in the Gospel of Mark means that he is Mark's primary eyewitness. And that's very important to understand that. And so, you know, we now know that through good historical studies of how ancient Greek historians and Roman historians would work. But, you know, that's why Peter is mentioned. And it's interesting because Peter's not the first apostle. He's not the first one called Andrew. His brother meets Jesus ahead of time and so does John, the beloved disciple. We know that from John's Gospel who gives us a more historical accounting, whereas Marx gives us Peter first because of his primacy, his importance.
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Dr. Ben Akers
And that shouldn't bother us as we look at the four Gospels and some of these stories. When did this happen here? This Gospel says it happened here and this Gospel said it happened here. These are real historical events that are being theologically interpreted is how Pope Benex the 16th puts it. They're theologically interpretive events. And so Mark wants to take us to, by giving us those clues in the text that what you're going to hear from me is Peter's preaching. Tim, I was wondering if there's. Are there other places in the New Testament where we get evidence of who John Mark is?
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Tim Gray
Yeah, we get an account of John Mark in several places. Acts of the Apostles is an important one. So when we read of St. Paul in Acts chapter 13, being summoned and called and chosen, and he's in Barnabas with him and the church in Antioch, then they go forward on their first St. Paul's first mission journey. And then we're told that a man named John Mark accompanies Paul and Barnabas and John Mark is a cousin Barnabas. And so Barnabas is a Levite. And we know Barnabas is a wealthy Levite. He's going to have land that he's going to donate to the early Christian community. And then we know that John Mark follows him. And so we know that John Mark, who is a Levite, and we know he's from Jerusalem. And the other evidence for that is in Acts chapter 12. We're told that when Peter escapes prison and he makes his prison break because the angel makes the soldiers, the 12 soldiers who are guarding him fall asleep and his chains are loosened. Peter then is led by the angel out of the prison. And then it's in the middle of the night, and then he runs to the home of the mother of John Mark. And so he's known as John Mark so that we don't confuse him with the beloved disciple John. So sometimes just Mark, or sometimes John Mark is his full name. And so he goes to the home of John Mark. And there's a slave girl there, a servant girl at the gate. Peter knocks on the door. The servant woman comes, eventually lets him in. You know, it's kind of a funny story. She thinks this is angel, and she gets so excited, she goes back and tells the others. And we're told that the whole Christian community is gathered at the home of the mother of John Mark. So Mark has a large home, his mother has a servant. They have a gate, they have a home large enough for the gathering of all the disciples. And of course, some people think that that home where they're all gathered is what place?
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Dr. Ben Akers
It's the upper room where Jesus would have celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples.
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Tim Gray
Exactly. And I'm convinced that that's the case. That when Jesus tells his disciples go to this home and they follow a man carrying a water jar, maybe that man is John Mark, actually.
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Dr. Ben Akers
And I love the scene, just as a spiritual interpretation of Peter knocking on the door, and they recognize him from his voice. And that kind of the clue in the text. Are we people as Christians, Catholics, that recognize Peter's voice when we hear it, and so that we can recognize Peter's voice in Scripture. But also now the Pope, as the successor to Peter, do we hear Peter's voice, who's the close follower of Christ? Do we recognize the own call to discipleship in our own life that we hear?
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Tim Gray
That's a great point. And I think that, you know, this idea that we are. We are called to heed the voice of Peter. And Mark did that. You know, Mark, here's Mark. And if you think about it, John Mark grew up in Jerusalem. His mother was wealthy. Obviously, his father's passed away. By the time Jesus goes there, it seems for the upper room. But he has this upper room where Jesus can gather with all 12 of his apostles. It's a large space. And having a large space in the city of Jerusalem means wealth. You couldn't afford that otherwise. And to have a serving and to have an outer gate to your place, all this. And what's interesting is Mark then because he's a Levite and because he's wealthy in Jerusalem, he got a cosmopolitan education. He, he was educated in Greek. And that's why we're told by Papias and others that Mark was the translator for Peter in Rome. So because Mark is well educated, he knows Latin, he knows Greek, and so he can work as Peter's translator when Peter goes off to Rome, which is really beautiful when you think about that. So all that background, all these little threads kind of come together with Mark.
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Dr. Ben Akers
And you see even with Paul, that the same thing where God was preparing him with his being a Roman citizen, being able to travel freely, his education, best education you can receive in Jerusalem and the faith. And so it's beautiful to see how God's providence works in the apostles lives. And we know that he works in our lives as well. Now one of the things that also we see in Acts of the Apostles is something happens with Mark and Barnabas and Paul.
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Tim Gray
That's right. So you know Mark before he really becomes. He knows Peter and so he's close with Peter, but then he becomes close with Paul. And he journeys with Paul on Paul's first mission journey. But when they leave from Antioch and they go to Cyprus and they evangelize through Cyprus and they're very successful. And then Paul and Barnabas move from Cyprus up to present day Turkey, Asia Minor, and they're going to go up to Antioch and Pisidia and John, Mark no longer follows them at that point he leaves and he goes back to Jerusalem and Paul gets very upset with Mark. He feels that, you know, that Mark kind of didn't finish the journey and that Mark left off and we don't know why Mark left halfway through the mission journey. My own suspicion is that what happens in Paphos, where Mark's going to separate is Barnabas was kind of the elder brother who brings Paul along, but Paul does the miracles in Paphos and everyone starts to follow Paul and Paul becomes the leader from that moment, from what happens there in Acts 13 and after Paul becomes the leader and not Barnabas, I think Mark, whose cousin, a kinsman to Barnabas, feels like, hey, Paul's taking, he's usurping the leadership. And I think Mark gets a little upset. He goes back to Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas then go up to Antioch and Galatia, and then they go back to Antioch. And when they come back to Antioch, Peter comes up and other people from Jerusalem, because they hear about what's happening with these Gentiles converting on the mission. And how did the people from Jerusalem hear. I believe they heard from John, Mark, and that's why they go up to Antioch. And then there's a conflict that happens, the first conflict in the early church between Paul and Barnabas and some of the people from James, some of the conservative Christians from Jerusalem who don't think that Gentiles should enter into the Christian fold without first being circumcised. And we're told in Acts 15 a great dispute, and no little argument arose because of that. And I think that's why Paul is upset with Mark and he refuses to take mark in Acts 16 on the second mission journey. Now, we find out later on that Paul and Mark get reconciled. So that's the good news. And part of the good news is even good, devout Christians can fight, right, and not get along, and yet they can be reconciled. And so there's a reconciliation that happens over time with Mark and Paul.
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Dr. Ben Akers
What a gift that the Lord gives us to know that that reconciliation took place, to know we have St. Paul, St. Peter, St. Barnabas, St. Mark, they're all saints. It reminds me of in. During the time of the Catholic Counter reformation, that Pope St. Pius V and St. Charles Barromeo were suspicious of St. Philip Neri because he was letting lay people teach, he was catechizing the lay people, and so they're just suspicious. So it's okay to have you have saintly people that disagree about pastoral applications.
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Tim Gray
And how to do things, and that's important to understand, is that good people, even saints, can disagree and have honest arguments. And the beautiful thing is John, Mark, he probably, you know, got his feathers ruffled. This is his kinsman. And Paul's become, you know, the top dog. And he's envious and jealous for his brother. So, you know, Mark is an early Christian, he's very devout, but he still has human feelings and human emotions. And we all do. And we all, as Christians, no matter how devout we are, we can still sin, we can still be selfish, we can still be wrong. And that's a lesson here. And Mark's redemption later on is a sign for us of great hope. And one of the things in the tradition about Mark and I want to come back to the Gospel of Mark and what's unique about Mark's Gospel, but in the tradition he accompanies Peter. And of course, Peter gets arrested and crucified upside down by Nero. But then Mark goes down and joins the. The Jewish Christian community, because there's a large Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. And he becomes an apostle and evangelist in Alexandria, Egypt. And then later on, his body gets.
- [19:28]
Dr. Ben Akers
Taken where he gets taken to Venice. So if you've ever been to Venice, the city in northeastern part of the country of Italy, there are lions everywhere. And that's because his body was brought up to Venice. And there's a beautiful church of San Marco, Basilica of San Marco, that's dedicated to.
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Tim Gray
So Venice, which is. Maybe some of you have visited Venice on tour there. But the great church of San Marco in Venice has Mark's body buried under the altar. And so the Venetians, who were great sailors and traders and going all over the world, they had devotion to Mark. And then once the Muslims started to take over Egypt, they brought the remains of Mark up to Venice and they built a beautiful cathedral in his name and his honor. And that's why the lion, which is the symbol of Venice comes, because the lion is a symbol of the Gospel of Mark. And they have a great loyalty to their patron saint, Mark.
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Dr. Ben Akers
My wife and I were blessed to be to go to attend Christmas Eve mass in the Basilica of San Marco. It was incredible. It was dark outside, it was cold. The water was. The wind was coming off the water. But they go into that church and if you've ever been, if not, Google it, the mosaics of that church just came alive when they turned the lights on and with all the candles. It really was an amazing experience.
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Tim Gray
How glorious. I'm jealous. I have not been able to be there yet. So you're way ahead of me there. I've seen some of the pictures in the art, and it's fantastic. In fact, we have some pictures of Saint Marcos in our Bible study. So one of the things I want to mention is I love the Gospel of Mark. And at the Augusta Institute, we did a Bible study, and it's 12 parts. And I hosted this Bible study. So this Bible study on the gospel of Mark, 12 episodes. But we use art throughout. And so one of the things we like to do in our Bible studies is we have all kinds of great images of art throughout. It's all full color. And so we use art and we teach on this great Catholic art all the way throughout. And so we have some of the art of San Marcos in Venice in this and some of those mosaics. And we also have prayers for the feast day that we have today the collect for the Mass of Mark in here and a lot of great art. And then we go through the whole Gospel of Mark. Let's talk, Ben, about what's unique about Mark's gospel. What stands out when you think of the Gospel of Mark. We have four gospels. What's unique about Mark's?
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Dr. Ben Akers
Mark's is the shortest gospel. So sometimes it's called the cliffnote version of the story of Jesus. One of the things that we also see as you read the Gospel of Mark, it almost reads like a Hollywood film script. It's boom, boom, boom, scene upon scene upon scene. And oftentimes the word that's the word that connects those scenes is the word immediately. That word immediately is used over 40 times in the Gospel of Mark to show it's an action packed gospel.
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Tim Gray
Mark loved action. It was fast paced. He doesn't have time for Matthew's discourses about the lilies of the field. He's got, it's action, Jesus is baptized and boom, we start off no time for genealogies, no time to talk about Jesus as a babe. You're in chapter one, verse nine and bam, you get the baptism of Jesus and then he's driven out into the wilderness, right? I mean it's action right from the get go.
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Dr. Ben Akers
And the very first miracle in Mark's gospel is a miracle of exorcism. So it shows right from the very beginning Jesus is battling Satan privately before as he begins after his baptism and then right as he goes into the synagogue at Capernaum. This is where the battle begins.
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Tim Gray
I love that insight from Mark because I think a lot of people when they read the gospels or Matthew's Gospel especially, they can begin to think, well, the enemies of Jesus are the Pharisees, the scribes and the chief priests. But Mark has a great insight. Mark's a Levite, he's from the priestly families and he grew up in Jerusalem. And he knows the corruption that the chief priests, he knows the problem, he's going to narrate that, that Jesus is going to come and call the temple a den of thieves. And Mark knows how much of a den of thesis actually is. But Mark wants to highlight that the real enemy of Jesus is Satan and the demons. That's the true enemy of Jesus. It's the true enemy of humanity. And so the very first conflict then in the Gospel of Mark is Jesus having a conflict with the demons. And of course the demons say, we know who you are, you know, you are the Holy One of God. You're The Son of God. And that sounds like the demons are saying, oh, Jesus, we kind of surrender. But they're not really surrendering there, are they?
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Dr. Ben Akers
They're trying to perform an exorcism on Christ. They're trying to cast the demons out of Christ because part of an exorcism is that the exorcist needs to know the name of the spirit that's possessing the person. And so they're trying to cast out the Holy Spirit from Christ.
- [24:05]
Tim Gray
So by using Jesus name, they're not honoring and recognizing him and making a confession of faith. By using Jesus names and titles, the Holy One of God, they're trying to control Jesus. Right. They're trying to do an exorcism by using that name to control Jesus. But they're not successful, are they?
- [24:22]
Dr. Ben Akers
No. Jesus is clearly, if you read the gospel, he's the strongman. That's actually an image he'll use. At the beginning of Mark's gospel is the devil's a strong man, but the stronger man comes and plunders the house of the strong man.
- [24:32]
Tim Gray
Yeah, you got to bind the strong man to plunder his goods. And Jesus comes to say, I am the strong man. I'm going to plunder the devil and I'm going to plunder his goods, which is his. And what's the possessions of the devil? Those whom he is possessing, these human beings who are made in the imago dei, the children of God. Right.
- [24:50]
Dr. Ben Akers
And Tim, one of the ways we can look at the structure of Mark's gospel, I love that he gives it right away. He gives the punchline for the very first line of his gospel. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. And if you go through the gospel of Mark, you see that key moments. Someone calls Jesus Christ the Messiah, someone calls Jesus the son of God. Do you want to talk about that?
- [25:12]
Tim Gray
Yeah, that's going to be crucial. I mean, and I love that Mark kind of wears his theology on his sleeve right from the very beginning. There's no question about who Jesus is. Mark wants to be really direct and clear. And I love Mark likes action and he also likes to be direct. Jesus is the son of God. And of course the great climax at the end of the story will be a Roman soldier, a Roman officer at the foot of the cross who's watched Jesus suffer and he's watched, seen many executions, he's seen many people die. But he never saw ever before someone die with the peace and the nobility and the tranquility and the self possession that Jesus does. And he sees the sun darken. He sees the earthquake at the time that Jesus dies. And he recognizes that truly this was the son of God and a righteous man. And so you get this great confession of who Jesus is at the cross. But you also get it in the middle of the Gospel as well, with Peter.
- [26:05]
Dr. Ben Akers
Right. In Mark, Chapter eight, there's a nice. The pair to that is when a Jewish man, Peter, recognized Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the one that all of Israel is looking forward to. And then to have a Gentile, a Roman pagan, acclaim that Christ is son of God.
- [26:21]
Tim Gray
Yeah. So those two moments really bring it together in the Gospel of Mark. Mark's a great storyteller. I think people oftentimes think, well, Mark's the simple gospel because he's the shortest. But that simplicity can be very deceiving. Mark's a subtle storyteller. And look, he's hung out with St. Paul. He's been hanging out with St. Peter. He's educated, Levite. Right. I know his Greek, and I know reading Mark in the Greek, his Greek is very poor compared to Luke, who's a native Greek speaker. Right. But remember, that's his third or second. You know, it's his second third language. He's, you know, he grew up with Aramaic, he probably knew Hebrew. He learned Greek and he learned Latin. So give the guy a little bit of a break. I mean, Mark's Greek isn't great, but that doesn't mean he's not educated and he's not smart. And he tells a fascinating story with that gospel. And it's a gospel that if you look at Matthew's Gospel. Matthew's Gospel is what I would call the catechism or the early Christians. It lays out very systematically a catechesis and a teaching. Mark's Gospel is action. And Mark is, in a sense, is saying, it's all about the way of the Lord. It's all about the cost of discipleship. Right.
- [27:33]
Dr. Ben Akers
And that's one of the early titles for the church, the Christian community before they're called Christians in Antioch, they're actually called the Way. Why are they called the Way? Because they follow the one who revealed himself as the way, the truth and the Life. That's John 14:6. But they also lived a different way than the world lived. And Mark's Gospel in a particular way, shows us what it's like to follow Christ on the way. It's on the way to Jerusalem. It's on the way to the cross. And so lots of many of the themes In Mark's Gospel, talk about discipleship and carrying the cross. And there's lots of fails. One of the things that I really enjoy in reading Mark's Gospel are the different stories of the fails. You see, the apostles keep making mistakes and that gives credence to that. This is a real authentic document. Because who, who is Peter? Peter? Is Peter going to get excited about a story where he's constantly making mistakes? No. But in his humility, he allows Mark to tell these stories. Because I failed. I betrayed our Lord, but he kept forgiving me. You keep going as well.
- [28:32]
Tim Gray
That's such a wonderful point, Ben, because that's what I love about Mark. Mark failed. He bailed on St. Paul halfway through his first mission journey. And yet Mark becomes a great leader. He doesn't give up, he doesn't despair. And he becomes the right hand man for the apostle Peter, evangelizing and working in Rome, which will eventually convert. How beautiful is that? What if Mark had given up? And what if Peter didn't have Mark to help translate and be his spiritual son and his right hand man in Rome? Who knows what would have happened? We wouldn't have the Gospel of Mark. But now we have this great gift of the Gospel of Mark and we have this great witness of Mark who in one of his stories, he records a man who says to Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. That's a great prayer for us. Pray to St. Mark today. Pick up the Gospel of Mark if you haven't read it. And we have the videos for the Lectio Mark Bible Study on form. So here's a great resource on form you can start watching. And if you want to learn more about Mark, the whole first Bible study is all on who Mark is. There's a lot more to the story of Mark and there's a lot more to his gospel than we can get into right now. But you can find that on lectiomark, that Bible study. And you can also get that at our Catholic Market, our web store, if you want to get the DVDs and the wonderful workbook that really is a guidebook for you to lead you through the Gospel of Mark. If you want to watch those videos which are free on formed. And again, thank you for joining us. Thank all of you for all the great notes of thanks that we're getting for this series, for the form dailies and thank all of you who have joined our mission circle to support us, to make these, to make form possible, to make the form daily as possible. We're so grateful for all that you do to support us and may the Lord bless you and Happy feast day of St. Mark.
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Host
You can watch these interviews in video format by visiting formed.org formed is an online Catholic streaming service created by the Augustan Institute and Ignatius Press with award winning studies and parish programs, inspiring audio content, movies, ebooks and family friendly kids programming to support the mission of the Augustine institute. Please visit missioncircle.org.