Mark: Getting to Know Jesus (Six Weeks with the Bible for Catholic Teens) - Softcover

Kevin Perrotta is an award-winning Catholic journalist and a former editor of God’s Word Today. In addition to the Six Weeks with the Bible series, he is the author of Invitation to Scripture and Your One-Stop Guide to the Bible. Perrotta lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Gerald Darring is an adjunct instructor of theology at Spring Hill College. He has taught elementary, middle, and high school students and has been an instructor in adult ministry formation and certification programs for nearly twenty years.

Six Weeks with the Bible for Catholic Teens
Exploring God’s Word and Taking It to Heart    $7.95 U.S.

Theme: Jesus and His Disciples

You might compare this volume to a short visit to a national park. The park is so large that you could spend months, even years, getting to know it. But a brief visit, if carefully planned, can be worthwhile. In a few hours you can drive through the park and pull over at a handful of sites. At each stop you can get out of the car, take a short trail through the woods, listen to the wind blowing in the trees, and get a feel for the place.
In this volume we’ll travel through the Gospel of Mark, making half a dozen stops along the way. At those points we’ll proceed on foot, taking a leisurely walk through the selected passages. The readings have been chosen to take us to the heart of Mark’s message about Jesus. After each discussion we’ll get back in the car and take the highway to the next stop. “Between Discussions” pages summarize the portions of Mark that we will pass along the way.
This guide provides everything you need either to explore the Gospel of Mark in six discussions or to do a six-part exploration on your own. The introduction on page 6 will prepare you to get the most out of your reading. The weekly sections feature key passages from Mark, with explanations that highlight what his words mean for us today. Equally important, each section supplies questions that will launch you into fruitful discussion, helping you both to explore Mark for yourself and to learn from one another. If you’re using the volume by yourself, the questions will spur your personal reflection.
Each discussion is meant to be a guided discovery.
Guided ~ None of us is equipped to read the Bible without help. We read the Bible for ourselves but not by ourselves. Scripture was written to be understood and applied in and with the Church. So each week “A Guide to the Reading,” drawing on the work of both modern biblical scholars and Christian writers of the past, supplies background and explanations. The guide will help you grasp Mark’s message. Think of it as a friendly park ranger who points out noteworthy details and explains what you’re looking at so you can appreciate things for yourself.
Discovery ~ The purpose is for you to interact with Mark’s Gospel. “Questions for a Closer Look” is a tool to help you dig into the Gospel and examine it carefully. “Questions for Application” will help you discern what Mark means for your life here and now. Each week concludes with an “Approach to Prayer” section that helps you respond to God’s Word. Supplementary “Living Tradition” and “Saints in the Making” sections offer the thoughts and experiences of Christians past and present in order to show you what the Gospel has meant to others—so that you can consider what it might mean for you.
If you are using this volume for individual study, pay special attention to the questions provided for each week (Warm-Up Questions, Questions for a Closer Look, Questions for Application). One advantage of individual study is that you can take all the time you need to consider all the questions. You may also want to read the Gospel of Mark in its entirety, and you will find that the “Between Discussions” pages will help you understand the additional portions of the Gospel. Finally, take your time making your way through the Gospel of Mark and this accompanying volume: let your reading be an opportunity for this Gospel to become God’s words to you.

Unexpected Good News

Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s play about life in a New England village, opened on Broadway in 1938. Today, more than 60 years later, many high school students still see or read the play as part of their English curriculum.
The play opens with the Stage Manager walking onto an empty stage to set the scene. “The name of the town,” he tells the audience, “is Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire—just across the Massachusetts line: latitude 42°40'; longitude 70°37'. The first act shows a day in our town. The day is May 7, 1901. The time is just before dawn.”
Later the Stage Manager brings a local professor on stage to tell the audience about the geology of the region and the American Indians who had lived there in centuries past.
By providing the audience with the real space-time coordinates and the historical background of the town, the playwright suggests that the lives of its residents have universal meaning.
When Mark wrote his Gospel, he did not put an informative stage manager at the beginning of his work. He dives right into the story. It might have helped us appreciate the importance of his story if he had written an introduction, however. Indeed, when Matthew and Luke sat down to adapt Mark and write their own Gospels, they each added a couple of introductory chapters.
An Our Town-style introduction to the Gospel of Mark might include a guide standing on a hillside, looking down at a cluster of stone houses in the valley. “The name of this town,” he says, “is Nazareth in Galilee. Galilee is a hilly region rising up from the Mediterranean to the west and descending eastward to the lake we call the Sea of Galilee. The lake’s been there for five million years, since the earth split open and formed the Great Rift that stretches from Lebanon to Africa.
“This area’s seen a lot of comings and goings. Some 30 thousand years ago, Neanderthal people kept house in a cave yonder. It’s almost two thousand years since Abraham traveled through these hills. Israelites settled here a thousand years ago. According to your modern reckoning, the year is a.d. 30.”
Such an introduction might have prepared us to appreciate the contrast between his story’s small scale and its importance for the whole world. Mark’s Gospel covers events that seemed insignificant to most people at the time. Mark tells about the brief life and untimely death of a man from an obscure village—a man hardly mentioned by anyone at the time besides his own followers. Yet before there were any Israelites, before prehistoric people lived in caves, before the shaping of the earth, this man, Jesus of Nazareth, had been at the center of God’s plan for humanity.
The play Our Town speaks to all of us because it helps us understand what it means to be a human being. Mark’s Gospel speaks to all of us because it tells about what God has done to change the human condition.
Pattern, promises, and expectations ~ Mark may not have given his Gospel an introduction because he thought it already had one: the Scriptures of Israel. He points out in his first verses that the gospel, or “Good News,” of Jesus unfolded in line with what God promised through the prophets of Israel.
Mark saw Jesus as the climax of what God had been doing with Israel. This means that it is important for us to know about God’s dealings with Israel if we are to understand who Jesus was and what he came to do. Let’s look briefly at the background.
The Scriptures of Israel, which Christians call the Old Testament, portray a single creator, who has made us in his likeness, designed to be in a relationship with him (Genesis 1:26). The God of the Old Testament is just, yet forgiving; he is a God both majestic and merciful (Sirach 2:18). The Old Testament portrays us as noble creatures who tend to set ourselves in conflict with God—and with each other.
The Old Testament shows that God focused his love for the human race on a small Near-Eastern people called Israel. God rescued the Israelites from their...