St Mark

IN PRAISE OF ST MARK

25 April is the Feast of St Mark the Evangelist.

Who was St Mark and why should we honour his name in the annual Liturgical Cycle?

WHO WAS ST MARK?

The New Testament gives us four different pictures of St Mark, reflecting four different stages of his life.

Firstly, the writer of the Acts of the Apostles tells us that John Mark, to use his full name, lived in Jerusalem with his widowed mother, Mary. He would appear to have come from a comparatively wealthy home insofar as the house is described as being spacious enough to accommodate a large Christian gathering and having the services of a maid.

It has been suggested that the Last Supper was held in the home of John Mark and that as a young boy, he witnessed the final days of the life of Jesus upon earth. It is further suggested that he is the young man referred to, only in Mark's Gospel, who ran away naked in the Garden of Gethsemane. However, such suggestions cannot be proved or disproved. Elsewhere in St Mark's Gospel we are told that the owner of the house was a man, and the historian Eusebius suggests that Mark was dependent upon another person for information concerning the life of Jesus.

Secondly, the writer of the Acts of the Apostles tells us that John Mark travelled to Antioch with his cousin Barnabas and Paul as an assistant on their first missionary journey, Quite what his duties as an "assistant" were, we do not know. However, for some unknown reason, John Mark left Paul and his cousin Barnabas at Perga in Pamphylia and returned home to Jerusalem. It has been suggested that he was not happy about the way his cousin was being pushed to the side as Paul assumed the role of leader. Others have suggested that he simply felt homesick. Whatever the reason, it was sufficiently serious for Paul to refuse to take him on his second missionary journey. This led to a break-up of the partnership between Paul and Barnabas. Barnabas and John Mark went off to Cyprus and Paul took Silas to Cilicia and Galatia.

Thirdly, Paul and Mark obviously patched up their difference because we read of him being with Paul in either Rome or Ephesus as a "fellow worker". Elsewhere, St Paul tells Timothy to bring Mark with him "for he is very useful in serving me".

Finally, there is evidence that he later developed a close friendship with St Peter, whilst in Rome, possibly after the death of Paul. In the First Letter of St Peter, probably written by an unknown author on his behalf, the writer refers to John Mark affectionately as his "son".

That is all we know about the life of John Mark from the pages of the New Testament. This brings us to the second question, namely

WHY SHOULD WE HONOUR HIS NAME IN THE ANNUAL LITURGICAL CYCLE?

The beginning of the answer to that question is to be found in a quotation from Papias, the Bishop of Hierapolis at the turn of the 2nd century, contained in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, written some 200 years later.

Papias is attributed by Eusebius as having said, "Mark became the interpreter of Peter and he wrote down accurately, but not in order, as much as he remembered of the sayings and doings of Christ. For he was not a hearer or a follower of the Lord, but afterwards, as I said, of Peter, who adapted his teachings to the needs of the moment and did not make an ordered exposition of the sayings of the Lord. And so Mark made no mistake when he thus wrote down some things as he remembered them: for he made it his special care to omit nothing of what he heard and to make no false statement therein".

In other words, John Mark, whilst not an actual eye witness to the ministry of Jesus, nevertheless, in the Gospel which bears his name, recorded the personal recollections of Peter who had been an eye witness. Presumably Peter could not read or write.

This obviously makes the Gospel, which John Mark wrote, very special insofar as it is based upon the testimony of one of the closest of our Lord's disciples, and therefore likely to be extremely accurate and reliable. Here we have, if you like, the nearest we can get to first hand evidence concerning the life and teaching of Jesus.

But that is not all! New Testament scholars date St Marks' Gospel at about 64/65AD whereas St Luke’s Gospel was written about 65-70AD and St Matthew’s Gospel about 20 years later. In other words, not only is St Marks Gospel based upon eye witness evidence, but it is the earliest of the three synoptic gospels.

In fact, we can go even further. New Testament scholars note that of the 105 sections of St Mark's Gospel, 93 of these occur in St Matthew’s and St Luke’s Gospels. They also point out that, not only do the Gospels of Luke and Matthew follow the same order of events as St Mark, but that Luke and Matthew produce 53% and 51% of the actual words of St Mark's Gospel. In other words, both St Luke and St Matthew used St Mark's Gospel as a basis for their own gospel narrative.

In the light of this, the contribution of John Mark to the life of the Christian Church, takes on a special significance. Not only was he active in the early missionary work of the church, but more importantly he records the recollections of a prominent eye witness to the life and death of Jesus. These recollections have formed the basis, not only of St Mark’s Gospel but of those attributed to St Luke and St Matthew.

So we honour, in the annual liturgical cycle, the name of John Mark and recall his significant contribution, as an evangelist, to our knowledge of Jesus.