The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Messianic Checkpoint: The Gospel of Mark (with Jeff Cavins) -2025
03 Jun 2025
Welcome to the second Messianic Checkpoint! Jeff Cavins joins Fr. Mike to introduce the Gospel of Mark and discuss how this short Gospel helps us understand both the identity and mission of Jesus. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.
Full Episode
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension.
Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is time for our second messianic checkpoint, and it is with the gospel of the Lord. of Mark last messianic checkpoint, or the first one we had went to the gospel of St. John, which was the longest gospel.
Now we are going down to Mark. I don't know, down to Mark is the best way to say it. We're going to Mark, which is the shortest of all four gospels. And again, joining us so grateful as always is Jeff Cavins, who's going to give us an intro to this second messianic checkpoint to this gospel of St. Mark. So Jeff, thank you so much for being here and welcome.
Well, it's a privilege to join you on this journey, and it's beautiful how people can go through the Bible and then every once in a while jump forward a little bit to see the fruit of what this whole story is about. And with four Gospels, each one of them has a little bit different emphasis, and together you get a full look at Jesus.
But we don't just blend them together because each one of them is unique.
They are. And it's one of the reasons why I love the fact that how we're doing this in this Bible in a year is we had all of John at once, maybe I think a little over a week, seven or eight days. And then we have all of Mark now, a number of a month and a half later.
And I think that there's something really powerful about that, that over the course of these next, I think it's eight days, we're going to go through the gospel of Mark and be able to hear his voice in a unique way, which is different than John's voice and different than Matthew and Luke's. And so, yeah, the gospel of Mark is remarkably unique.
In fact, we have a missionary here who last year she said, oh, gosh, I just I don't I don't like the gospel of Mark. I mean, it's just it's so it's too brief. It's too like staccato. It's too and kind of downplayed it. And and then. I handed her a commentary that is put out by, I think it's some kind of publication. It's a Catholic commentary on sacred scripture.
And she said, oh my gosh, Gospel Mark is my favorite gospel from now on. Because it just, like you are about to say, the uniqueness of Mark's gospel not only makes it different, it makes it remarkable. I mean, there's some things that are just fascinating that Mark highlights that aren't necessarily in the other gospels in the same way.
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