By Colleen Pressprich
On April 25th we celebrate the feast day of St. Mark the Evangelist, so I thought I’d share 5 fun facts about this great saint that you might not already know. . .
Not an apostle, but may be included in the Gospel.
Even though he’s the author of one of the four New Testament Gospels, St. Mark was not one of the twelve apostles. Most of what we know about him comes from the other books of the New Testament.
We don’t know for sure that Mark even knew Jesus personally, though there are historians who believe that Mark was writing about himself in his account of the arrest of Jesus when he said, “now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked” (Mark 14:51-52)
A friend of St. Peter and traveled with Paul.
We do know that Mark was a friend of St. Peter, who refers to him as “my son.” In fact, after Peter’s arrest and subsequent escape from prison, he went to stay at Mark’s mom’s house.
We also know from Acts that Mark traveled with St. Paul on his first missionary journey.
His Gospel is both the oldest and the shortest of the four.
Mark’s Gospel was the first of the four gospels to be written. Among his sources would have been St. Peter himself and the Church in both Antioch and Jerusalem.
St. Mark’s gospel is also the shortest of the four, containing only 16 chapters.
His symbol is the winged lion.
Each of the four Gospel writers has a symbolic animal associated with them. These come from the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel, where the prophet describes seeing four living creatures. Each of the four had wings, but one had the face of a man, one a lion, one a bull, and one an eagle. Later, these were taken to symbolize each of the four gospel writers.
Mark’s symbol is the winged lion because of his description of John the Baptist (a voice crying out in the wilderness . . . ). When St. Mark the Evangelist appears in art, there is often a winged lion in the picture, though sometimes the lion stands in place of the man himself. He is also drawn holding a red book (his gospel).
He died a martyr.
Like many of the early saints of the Church, St. Mark died as a martyr.
Toward the end of his life, he was named the first bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. Though this was cheered by the Christians in the city, he was hated by those who served the traditional gods. They attacked him, put a rope around his neck, and dragged him through the city until he was dead.
His relics were kept in Egypt but were later moved to Venice, where they remain today.
Colleen Pressprich is a homeschooling mom of five who lives with her family in Michigan. She is the author of Marian Consecration for Families with Young Children and The Women Doctors of the Church. She has a passion for helping parents share their faith with their kids.
