The current judicial and political context leads us to reflect and remember that passage of the Gospel in which Jesus expelled the merchants from the temple who “turned it into a den of robbers”. But at this time of Christmas and hope in the year 2024, it is important to put aside national events and, in addition to celebrating the birth of our Savior, delve into the origins and sources that feed our faith.

Those people who heard Jesus and witnessed his teachings found it important to remember his words and deeds. Those who knew him before his death and discovered who he was after his resurrection felt the need to preserve those memories. Those memories of Jesus, which were transmitted orally in the first generations of his disciples, are collected in the Gospels, memories that were preserved by his disciples.

That Christmas sadness

Although the people who knew them have died, the memories remain over time. This is why the first Christians labeled them the Apostles’ Remembrance before calling them the Gospels.

Within this oral tradition, memories of Jesus took on more complex forms from a literary point of view. Those biographical stories that were more widespread and adapted to the texts of the Law and the prophets who considered Jesus the Messiah and Savior were attributed from the end of the 2nd century AD. C. to the four apostles: Mark, Luke, Matthew and John. It was these gospels that entered the canon as the Tetramorphic Gospel, and were approved by a council at the time of Constantine in the 4th century (James Guijarro-Four Gospels).

Those stories known as apocryphal gospels, written in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, which were not subject to the general process of canonization, nor included in the general revelation available to all, were left aside.

After Christmas

The Gospel according to Mark was written first. In this literary work, the author incorporated and arranged in an original way a story focused on the public life of Jesus. This was the basis on which the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke were written, expanded. For his part, John wrote the most spiritual Gospel and also the Apocalypse.

According to Luke’s account in the Acts of the Apostles, they were the spreaders of the apostolic work, which could only be known through the action of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost was an event in which they received the wisdom to spread the word and the strength for the martyrdom that its spread and integration entailed, which the Church finally dedicated to them at the Council of Nicaea in 325. C. on these four gospels, in one story divided into four. Our faith.

In this way, it is important to keep in mind the importance of the gospel in our Christian formation and to understand that these writings have their roots in the memories and living tradition of the teachings of Jesus and his disciples. (OR)