Thursday in the Fourth Week of Easter, April 25

The Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist

Mark 16, 15-20

Jesus appeared to the Eleven and said to them: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”  Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.

St. Mark seems to have been born in Jerusalem.  His mother was one of the women named Mary who followed the Lord Jesus, and it is probably that Jesus used her house as a home on his visits to the Holy City as well as for his Last Supper,  the Apostles took refuge there at the time of the Crucifixion, and the house served as the setting for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  While it seems likely that St. Mark witnessed some of this, he is not mentioned as playing a role in any of these events.  Some of the Fathers suggest that he is the young man wrapped in a blanket  in Mark 14, 51.  His relative Barnabas became a Christian very soon after Pentecost and began to preach the Gospel beyond the traditional boundaries of Israel, even reaching the Gentiles.  Mark joined him and later they were joined by St. Paul.  At a certain point Mark went back to Jerusalem, against Paul’s wishes.  Later he went with St. Peter when the Prince of the Apostles traveled to Rome to preach the Gospel there.  He became indispensable to Peter, the latter calling him “his son” in 1 Peter 5, 13.  A very early tradition handed down by Papias (d. 130) held that Mark served as Peter’s interpreter and secretary, writing down what Peter said about the Lord Jesus for the benefit of the Christian community in Rome.  After Peter’s crucifixion Mark went to Egypt and it is claimed by both tradition and by the Egyptian Christians that he founded the church of Alexandria.  It is not certain how or where he died, but a later tradition has him martyred in Alexandria.

St. Mark does not attempt to put the acts of the Lord’s Public Life in order, and this was recognized by the early Fathers.  His brisk narrative, with one event linked to another with a simple “and then” conveys freshness and excitement, as though Mark were living the event he was relating as he was hearing them and writing them down.  He presents only one major parable and focuses on the miracles Jesus performed, which would have appealed very much to the Roman Christians who were unfamiliar with Jewish customs, preaching, and arguments about the Messiah.  He does see value in reproducing various Hebrew or Aramaic words that Jesus spoke and he writes them down along with their translation into Greek, the language the Gospel was originally written in.  As to the Greek, it is clearly not the author’s first language, and his native Hebrew or Aramaic comes through in such ways as word order in his sentences.  

He was a man who believed deeply in the Lord and loved him with all his heart, as is clear from the excitement that bursts through the words he wrote, and in the unexpected restraint he maintains in his description of the Passion and Death of his Lord.

We rejoice in the example of St. Mark, missionary and evangelist, and thank God for his Gospel, which allows us to run alongside the Lord Jesus in his relentless work to save mankind.

The sixteenth article in our continuing series on the Holy Mass:: The Third Eucharistic Prayer

This prayer was composed after the Second Vatican Council as a blend of the First and Second Eucharistic Prayers. with smoother transitions between the various sections than found in the First and a greater richness of doctrine than found in the Second while not as long as the First.  This prayer flows very evenly.  It emphasizes the sacrificial nature of the action undertaken in this part of the Mass and the role of the Holy Spirit in it, and it offers thanksgiving to God for his blessings.  It also prays for persecuted Christians — members of the faithful “scattered throughout the world”.  

Next, the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer