1. Mark – The Evangelist

Mark is the first of the four evangelists to have composed an ordered text in which he tells the great experience of Jesus Christ. Mark is a disciple of Peter, his collaborator.

The ancient tradition presented him as ‘hermeneutés Petru’ = interpreter, translator of Peter. We don't know much about him, but his name appears in the Acts of the Apostles, His name was John. Mark is a middle name; belonged to an aristocratic and priestly family of Jerusalem. The two names, one of Jewish origin and the other of Roman tradition speaks of the double situation in which the personalities of a noble family came to meet in the Jewish world.

On the one hand, they maintained the traditions of the ancestors, on the other, they wanted to be open to the new world, to the new culture, to the dominant political regime in Rome. John, called Mark, found himself living the experience of Jesus in a particular situation. Probably he did not know Jesus directly during his earthly life, but he was lucky of finding the disciples of the first Christian community in his home. In all likelihood, in fact, what we call the ‘Cenacle’ house was his home.

It was the parents, probably the parents of Mark, who welcomed Jesus for what was the Last Supper, a paschal celebration in the imminence of his arrest. We have a detail in the text of the Gospel of Mark that says something that it is ignored by all the other evangelists.

A small detail that could be insignificant if it wasn't particularly interesting. We find it in chapter 14, in verses 51 and 52. During the Gethsemane scene, while Jesus is arrested, it is said: “A young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked.” Who is this young man? Why do the other evangelists ignore this detail? What meaning can it have in the general history of the passion according to Mark?

We do not have a certain answer to these questions, but we can propose a hypothesis. It is a probable hypothesis that this young man is Mark himself; and it could be the way in which the literary author of the text signed his work. It's a way used often by artists to appear within a great work; it also applies to painters, to film directors. In this case, Mark could have wanted to underline, ‘even though from afar I was also there.’

What could have happened that night? The young man named Mark was a witness from afar to the arrival of that group of men for an Easter dinner at his home. He noticed that they left late at night and, obviously intrigued, he followed them, he only had a sheet; as he had already undressed to go to bed, typical practice of the rich because in ancient times the poor used to sleep dressed.

Without being properly dressed, only with a sheet on his shoulders, this young man follows the group of men who descend the stairs of a stairway that is still visible today, on the hill of Zion, in Jerusalem, to the bottom of the Kidron valley and then he follows Jesus and his disciples to the opposite side, in the olive garden, called Gethsemane, where the oil mill is.

As Jesus walks away to pray, the young man can watch him. We can imagine the scene in an olive grove, with a full moon, bright because it is Easter night, therefore, a full moon night. There is a particular silence when the soldiers suddenly arrive and arrest Jesus. There is a strong uproar; the young man is hiding a little bit behind a tree, and suddenly he feels someone put a hand on his shoulder; a soldier tries to get him, but the young man is quick and leaves the sheet in the soldier's hand; the young man runs away naked, returns home and he probably doesn't say anything, except that many years later he will recount this detail to talk about his presence in the history of Jesus.

After the tragedy of his Master's death, the disciples are received as guests in that house and they remain there until Pentecost. At Easter Jesus makes himself present to the disciples in the Upper Room. Fifty days later, they are still there and the Holy Spirit surprises the guests of that house, that it had practically become their headquarters, the main headquarters of the first Christian community.

And Mark saw the birth of the Church at his home, therefore, he knew Peter and the others directly, and attended the beginning of their preaching. And if his parents had sympathy for the Master, slowly it became faith, and total adherence in Mark. Belonging to a noble aristocratic and priestly family Mark must have continued his studies, but during his studies when he was an adolescent, we would say, could be regarded as studies of theology or canon law, in the temple school frequented by noble priests, Mark has fresh in his mind and heart the experience of the first Christian preaching.

Mark has the opportunity to train culturally, to take root in the tradition of Israel, but now his heart is on the other side. The head follows the preaching of the apostles and he adheres to the Christian faith. He accompanies Barnabas, his cousin, on a first apostolic mission along with Paul. Therefore, he leaves Jerusalem and begins the missionary activity.

There is a moment of difficulty during that first trip; at a certain moment, Mark decides to stop and returns to Jerusalem. In his second missionary journey, Paul will no longer want Mark to go with him. Instead, Barnabas decides to take him with him and they leave for a new mission. If in the year 30, the year of Easter, of the death and resurrection of Jesus, Mark is a young boy, about ten to fifteen years old, when the mission begins throughout the 40s, he is a man in his twenties; and the following years Mark undoubtedly dedicates himself to this apostolic mission, the proclamation of the Gospel.

We cannot follow him because we have no information in the Acts of the Apostles or from other sources, except that the ancient documents of the Fathers testify that his literary work took place in Rome, when Peter was still present. Peter died a martyr in the year 64, therefore, we can hypothesize that the literary work of Mark took place in the capital of the empire, in Rome in the early sixties.

Mark finds in Rome very relevant personalities, like Peter and Paul; and Barnabas, Luke, Titus, Timothy are also there and various other important people. The Christian community of Rome is a living community in the sense that is expanding, there are new people that are welcomed into the community, but these sympathizers must be trained to become catechumens, that is, they enroll in catechism, they need training to know Jesus and be able to adhere to his person. They must prepare for baptism. In all probability, the Gospel according to Mark was born as a formative text for the catechumens of Rome.

A hypothesis recently put forward by a Belgian scholar, a Benedictine, Benoit Standaert, sees in the book of Mark a possible Christian Easter Haggadah. He placed as title of his recent book an ambiguous and somewhat strange text: "Mark: Gospel of one night, Gospel for life". I confess that when I saw the announcement of this publication I did not understand this title; I had to read the book to understand and appreciate the proposed hypothesis.

‘The one night’ would be Easter. In the Hebrew tradition, the Jewish Passover dinner is accompanied of a ‘story ', which in Hebrew is called ‘haggadah’. It simply means 'story'. It is the story of the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, with many details and comments added by tradition.

Now, the Christian community that has preserved the bond with the Jewish family, kept the feast of Passover, the custom of a night celebration with a dinner that becomes the Eucharist. But on that occasion, they couldn't just read the Exodus account; it was necessary to narrate the new exodus, that is, what had happened to Jesus Christ and that was decisive for the new Christian faith.

There was a need for a Christian ‘haggadah’, for a paschal account that had the event of Jesus Christ as its center. That is why we can call it, 'one night's gospel' because it was probably proposed as a comprehensive, complete reading for that Easter dinner, In today’s terms, we could call this ‘the night Mass on Holy Saturday’.