Father Ken’s Message:
Good afternoon and welcome to the Cathedral of Sapporo. Today is the first Sunday of Advent in the new liturgical Year B. During Year B we will be reading the Gospel of Mark. So, I thought today I would use the homily to introduce you all to St. Mark for those of you not familiar with him.
St. Mark was a good friend of St. Peter. In fact, St. Peter called Mark his son (1 Peter 5:13). Mark was not one of the disciples. He got his information about Jesus from St. Peter, he was like a “ghost-writer” for St. Peter, who was an eye-witness to the amazing life of Jesus. Mark was well educated and could read, write and speak both Greek and Latin. According to Roman history books he is recorded as the translator of St. Peter during his time living in Rome. The Gospel of St. Mark is also known as St. Peter’s Memoirs of Living with Jesus.
Later St. Mark even went on missionary journeys with St. Paul and his helper Barnabas, who was the cousin of St. Mark (Colossians 4:10). So they seemed to be a very Catholic and religious family. Finally, Mark went to Rome with St. Peter and wrote the Gospel there. Unfortunately, St. Peter died in Rome on Vatican Hill, which is not included in the Gospel.
St. Mark wrote for Roman readers. Romans were pragmatic people, a bit like modern Americans, not interested in culture, or speeches; they were more interested in big news, action and progress. So, Mark deliberately did not include information about Jewish customs, feast days, laws, or the family genealogy of Jesus which Romans would not understand. There isn’t even the Christmas story in his Gospel. It begins right away with the St. John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness. He is like a lion roaring the message that the Son of God is coming. For that reason, the animal symbol for Mark is the lion and I put a painting of Mark and a lion on the cover page. It represents power of his message to get people’s attention quickly.
Romans admired people who got things done, like Jesus doing miracles. However, Jesus’ miracles were possible by the power of God’s grace, on the other hand Roman’s typically got things done through force. The keyword used by St. Mark is “immediately,” it occurs forty-two times in the Gospel. Whenever Jesus obeys the will of his Father to perform a miracle “immediately” appears. Mark does not describe or interpret the meaning of Jesus’ actions like in the Gospel of St. John, he simple writes the facts of the actions of Jesus. He is like a newspaper reporter. Mark includes 18 miracles of Jesus in his Gospel.
The theme of St. Mark’s Gospel is recorded in the opening sentence, “This is the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And again, towards the end of the Gospel, a Roman soldier calls Jesus, “the Son of God” (chapter 15 verse 39) after watching the way he died on the Cross. The Roman soldier’s name is Longinus. He was ordered by Pontius Pilate to make sure Jesus was dead by putting a spear into his chest. When he did this blood and water squirted out separately. This incident is recorded in the Gospel of St. John in chapter 19 verse 34. After witnessing Jesus die Longinus becomes baptized a Catholic and becomes an important member of the community until he was martyred. Since Longinus himself is a Roman the appeal and the truthfulness of Mark’s Gospel was enhanced. Longinus is so important in our Catholic Church history that 500 years ago when Michelangelo completed the Vatican Basilica and Bernini was completing the interior design of it, he carved a huge 3-meter-high statue of Longinus and placed it close to the altar. Also on the balcony above the statue is the actual spear that Longinus used to pierce Jesus’ side.
St. Mark wrote the first Gospel about 35-45 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It should have been written earlier but the early Christians thought that Jesus would return soon after he Ascended into Heaven because of all the stories he told about the end of world happening when nobody expects it to. In fact, some Christians stopped working just waiting for the end like waiting for a bus to come. Eventually they realized that Jesus’ sense of time and their own was different so Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote their Gospels. Marks was the first written; it contains just the important facts like a newspaper article. Gratefully the earlier believers would spend time memorizing the stories about Jesus, so when it was time to write them down into the Gospels, there was plenty of material.
We modern Catholics have inherited the same sense of impatience for the Second Coming of Jesus, ergo Advent was started to help us think more deeply about these spiritual mysteries. Because
Christmas this year falls on a Monday we have the shortest version of Advent this year, only 22 days. During this time the Church would like us each to think about 3 comings of Jesus in history: 1. at the end of time; 2. at Christmas time; and 3. in our everyday experience of attending Masses, praying and seeing the face of Jesus in all the people around us. There has always been a lot of hysteria about “doomsday.” But for us Catholics we should not worry when Chicken Little screams about “the sky is falling,” because St. John wrote in his First Letter in chapter 5 verse 13: “do not forget that you have eternal life within you.” This is the theme of this First Sunday in Advent. It is about our hope, that Heaven is waiting for us. So, my dear brothers and sisters in Jesus, let us keep our eyes focused on our brother Jesus everyday only he can save us from all our physical, mental, and spiritual problems. God bless your 22 days of Advent.
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