Whoever the author of the second gospel was, we owe him a huge debt of gratitude.  His achievement is creating the first gospel from a mass of traditions about Jesus had enormous and far-reaching results, not the least of which was providing a basis and the inspiration for the later efforts of Matthew and Luke.

Fortunately, the reformed ecumenical lectionary that has been so widely adopted since Vatican II has restored the Gospel of Mark to a dignity equal to the other gospels, something that hasn’t been true for many, many centuries.  Except for the liberal Quest for the Historical Jesus that privileged Mark as the earliest and therefore most reliable of the gospels for the purpose of historical reconstruction, Mark has always been politely ignored for the most part by Christians.  Since about 90% of Mark is also found in Matthew or Luke, and those gospels contain so much of the teaching of the Master that Mark lacks, and since Mark is rather hard on the apostles and contains some potentially embarrassing details (e.g., about the occasional anger or ignorance of Jesus), and since Mark displays a primitive literary style (especially in Greek) and because Matthew and John were believed to be by eyewitnesses whereas Mark was not, the second gospel was typically overlooked and scarcely ever used in the old pre-Vatican II lectionary.  I’m glad it’s now been restored to a place of honor and dignity again, along with the other three gospels.

David Handy+