Monday in the Second Week of Easter, April 25, 2022

The Feast of St. Mark

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.

It is said that St. Mark was the son of a woman named Mary, who owned a large house in Jerusalem.  He was evidently named “John” at his birth, and as was customary, had a Graeco-Roman name as well, “Mark”, anglicized from “Marcus”.  He had a cousin named Barnabas, who either was born on the island of Cyprus or spent a good part of his life there.  Mark’s mother’s house served as an important base for the Lord Jesus and his Apostles.  It was there that the Last Supper was eaten, and this was the house to which the Apostles fled at the time of the crucifixion.  Jesus appeared there on the days of his Resurrection and subsequently.  At this house the Apostles and a large number of other disciples (presumably including Mark and his mother) were meeting when the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost.  It is speculated that Mark wrote of himself in his own Gospel as the young man in the Garden of Gethsemane (cf. Mark 14, 51-52).  He and Barnabas were early companions and fellow missionaries of St. Paul.  At some point, though, Mark felt compelled to leave Paul and departed.  He may have returned to Jerusalem on family business or simply because he was exhausted from the incessant work.  He later became an assistant to St. Peter, who calls him his “son” in 1 Peter 5, 13, a letter written from Rome.  We learn from the Fathers that Mark acted as Peter’s interpreter and secretary, hinting that Peter’s Greek or Latin may have needed a little help as he preached to the Romans.  According to St. Clement of Alexandria, writing before the year 200, “And so greatly did the splendor of piety illumine the minds of Peter’s hearers that they were not satisfied with hearing once only, and were not content with the unwritten teaching of the divine Gospel, but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, a follower of Peter, and the one whose Gospel is extant, that he would leave them a written monument of the doctrine which had been orally communicated to them. Nor did they cease until they had prevailed with the man, and had thus become the occasion of the written Gospel which bears the name of Mark.  And they say that Peter, when he had learned, through a revelation of the Spirit, of that which had been done, was pleased with the zeal of the man, and that the work obtained the sanction of his authority for the purpose of being used in the churches.”  According to Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History, Mark left Rome during the reign of the Emperor Claudius, which would date his Gospel, written in Rome, to the 40’s.  He made his way to Alexandria, Egypt, where he introduced the Faith.  The Coptic Christians in that city regard him as their founder.  The original rite of the Mass, called the “Liturgy of St. Mark” and going back to his time if not to him, was celebrated in the Greek language.  As the use of Greek faded over time, it was succeeded by a Coptic translation called the “Liturgy of St. Cyril”, established under Cyril of Alexandria in the fourth century.  The time, place, and manner of St. Mark’s death remains uncertain. An ancient tradition depicts him as being dragged to death through the streets of Alexandria.  His relics are kept in St. Mark’s in Venice.