The Gospel according to St Mark: A Devotional Commentary

Volume 4

Whenever John’s account of the sequence of events differs from the account given by the Synoptics, my own inclination is always to accept John’s account as the more accurate. For John wrote his Gospel last, when the three other Gospels were already widely known throughout the Church; and I cannot conceive of John giving a different account from that with which the Church was already familiar unless it was with the deliberate intension of correcting the accounts already current. Accordingly I accept John’s date for the feast in Simon’s house. From its position in Mark’s narrative we might gather that it took place just two days before our Lord’s Passion. But John in his record of the same feast, in chapter 12 of his Gospel, states definitely that it took place six days before the Passover: that is to say, according to John’s chronology, it took place before the Triumphal Entry. If that be so, Mark does not give the story quite in its proper setting. But what an eye for artistic effect that Evangelist had when he placed side by side these two scenes—the chief priests plotting in the palace and Mary breaking her alabaster box in Simon’s house! I do not mean to suggest that Mark’s choice and arrangement of subjects were dictated simply by considerations of artistry. Nevertheless, if he had been a literary artist, intent mainly upon effect, he could not have grouped his incidents more admirably than he has done here. These two brief paragraphs give us a couple of contrasted pictures, and the effect of each is heightened by its contiguity to the other. The bitter hate of the chief priests appears all the more malignant by contrast with Mary’s devoted and enthusiastic love; and Mary’s devoted and enthusiastic love shines out the more splendidly against the black and bitter hate of the priests.