Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Mark. Scholars tell us that even though his Gospel is listed second in the current structure of the New Testament it was, in all likelihood, written first. We have St. Mark to thank for creating the Gospel form — a narrative of the life of Jesus leading to faith. Since, as near as we can tell, the gospel of St. Mark was written about the year 70, it was not until then that the story of what Jesus said and did during his public ministry was presented in an organized manner. It is hard for us to imagine any other way of proclaiming the Word. The lesson for our own relationships: how important it is to come to know the narrative of a person — the events and influences in their life story — in order to understand them.
