Apostolic Age (1st century)
Feast: April 25
The young man who panicked and ran away from Jesus’ arrest naked — then came back and wrote the first Gospel.
Many scholars believe Mark is the unnamed young man in his own Gospel who, on the night of Jesus’ arrest, fled naked when the guards grabbed his linen cloth. If so, it’s a brutally honest self-portrait: he ran. And that pattern repeated. When Paul and Barnabas took him on their first missionary trip, Mark bailed partway through and went home to Jerusalem. Paul was so disgusted he refused to bring Mark on the next trip, and the argument split Paul and Barnabas apart. Barnabas gave Mark a second chance and took him to Cyprus. It paid off. Mark became Peter’s interpreter and traveling companion in Rome. ‘Mark, my son,’ Peter calls him in his first letter. Ancient tradition says Mark’s Gospel is essentially Peter’s preaching written down — fast-paced, blunt, heavy on action verbs, and unflinching about the disciples’ failures. It is the shortest Gospel and probably the earliest, and it hits like a freight train. Mark later traveled to Alexandria and founded the church there — one of the great sees of early Christianity. The Coptic Church considers him their founder. He was reportedly martyred by being dragged through the streets. The quitter became the one who got the story down first.