The Revelation of the Holy Spirit - Part 1

By Len Urso Our Parish's Patron
In August of 2007, a small group of men and women met at Bishop Gorman High School to begin discussing the newest Catholic parish in the Diocese of Las Vegas. Established by Bishop Joseph A. Pepe as Holy Spirit Catholic Church, this fledgling parish would celebrate its first liturgy in December of 2007 in the cafeteria of Bishop Gorman High School. Today, Holy Spirit is a parish of almost 1200 families, and is about to embark on an ambitious capital campaign to raise funds for a 23 million dollar, fully integrated parish complex in Summerlin, Nevada. While these human endeavors seem impressive on the surface, we must always remember that it is the movement of the Holy Spirit behind our actions that breathes life into our initiatives and imbues love into our work.

Revelation
Revelation is a term that is used to describe a type of "unveiling." In the case of the Church, we refer to Revelation to indicate all of the ways in which God reveals (unveils) himself to us for the purpose of our salvation. The Catholic Church describes Revelation as consisting essentially of our Holy Scriptures (the Bible), and the Living Tradition of the Church itself. Tradition is a somewhat abstract concept that relates to the way in which the Church believes and teaches in history through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Revelation of the Holy Spirit through the inspired Scriptures (inspired by the very same Holy Spirit) in fact, is the very purpose of this series!

The Synoptic Gospels
The Synoptic Gospels are the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke. The term "synoptic" is a hybrid of the prefix "syn" which means "one" or "together," and the word "optic" which refers to the eye, or "seeing." In this sense the term "synoptic" means "together with one view," and applied to the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, these are the Gospels that present a relatively unified view of Jesus Christ.

Most people are not used to hearing the first three Gospels referred to in this order as it sounds much more natural to say, "Matthew, Mark and Luke (and John)." The reason for this is mostly because this is the order in which the Gospels are presented in our Scriptures. Scholars tell us, however, that Mark's Gospel was written first (most likely in Rome between the years 65 and 70 AD), and Matthew and Luke's Gospels were written between 10 and 15 years later. Even more interesting, both Matthew and Luke seemed to have used Mark as a source in composing their own Gospel accounts. Roughly 80-90% of Mark's Gospel is included in both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. There are also some writings (mainly sayings and teachings of Jesus) that are found in Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark. This led scholars to believe that Matthew and Luke drew upon a source (which they named "Quelle" or "Q" from the German word for "source) that was unknown to Mark. In the modern era there is no copy of this "Q" document that has survived, although its existence is inferred through common texts in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Finally, keeping in mind that all of the Gospels are theological documents and not explicit histories of Jesus' life, each of the Gospel writers writes for a different audience. Mark writes for an early, mostly Gentile or non-Jewish, persecuted Christian community. Matthew writes for a mostly Jewish-Christian community and Luke for a mostly Gentile Christian community. There are also writings in Matthew and Luke that are particular to their own Gospels. Material particular to Matthew is referred to as the "M" source, and material that is particular to Luke is called the "L" source.

You may be wondering, "well...what about John?" And that's a very good question. The Gospel of John is not included among the Synoptics for a variety of reasons. John appears to have been written some 20-25 years later than both Matthew and Luke (both of which date to the 80's AD), and differs according to literary style. John also presents a highly developed theology of Jesus that is not present in the Synoptic Gospels. For these reasons, when referring to John, scholars usually refer to, "The Fourth Gospel."