What Does Mark 13:1 Mean?

**XIII.** (1) **One of his disciples.**—Note St. Mark’s vivid way of giving the very words of the disciple, instead of saying with St. Matthew that they “came to show” the buildings of the Temple. Here, again, the juxtaposition of narratives in St. Mark gives them a special point. The “stones” of Herod’s Temple (for it was to him chiefly that it owed its magnificence) were of sculptured marble. The “buildings,” or structures, included columns, chambers, porticos that were, as St. Luke tells us (Luke 21:5), the votive *offerings* of the faithful. The disciples gazed on these with the natural admiration of Galilean peasants. In spite of the lesson they had just received—a lesson meant, it may be, to correct the tendency which our Lord discerned—they were still measuring things by their quantity and size. They admired the “goodly stones” more than the “widow’s mite.” They were now to be taught that, while the one should be spoken of throughout the whole world, the other should be destroyed, so that not a vestige should remain. We cannot say who spoke the words, but it is at least probable that it came from one of the four who are named in Mark 13:3.