St. Mark

St. Mark the Apos­tle, the Founder of the Cop­tic Church

The Cop­tic Church or the Church of Alexan­dria is called “Sees of St. Mark”; one of the ear­li­est four sees: Jerusalem, Anti­och, Alexan­dria, and Rome.

St. Mark, The Founder

The Copts are proud of the apos­tolic­ity of their Church, whose founder is St. Mark; one of the sev­enty Apos­tles (Mk 10:10), and one of the four Evan­ge­lists. He is regarded by the Cop­tic hier­ar­chy as the first of their unbro­ken 117 patri­archs, and also the first of a stream of Egypt­ian martyrs.

This apos­tolic­ity was not only fur­nished on grounds of its foun­da­tion but rather by the per­sis­tence of the Church in observ­ing the same faith received by the Apos­tle and his suc­ces­sors, the Holy Fathers.

St. Mark’s Bibliography

St. Mark was an African native of Jew­ish par­ents who belonged to the Levites’ tribe. His fam­ily lived in Cyre­naica until they were attacked by some bar­bar­ians, and lost their prop­erty. Con­se­quently, they moved to Jerusalem with their child John Mark (Acts 12:12, 25; 15:37). Appar­ently, he was given a good edu­ca­tion and became con­ver­sant in both Greek and Latin in addi­tion to Hebrew. His fam­ily was highly reli­gious and in close rela­tion­ship with the Lord Jesus Christ. His cousin was St. Barn­abas and his father’s cousin was St. Peter. His mother, Mary, played an impor­tant part in the early days of the Church in Jerusalem. Her upper room became the first Chris­t­ian church in the world where the Lord Jesus Christ Him­self insti­tuted the Holy Eucharist (Mk 14:12 – 26). Also, this is the same place where the Lord appeared to the dis­ci­ples after His res­ur­rec­tion and His Holy Spirit came upon them.

Young Mark was always asso­ci­ated with the Lord, who choose him as one of the sev­enty. He is men­tioned in the Holy Scrip­tures in a num­ber of events related with the Lord. For exam­ple, he was present at the wed­ding of Cana of Galilee, and was the man who had been car­ry­ing the jar when the two dis­ci­ples went to pre­pare a place for the cel­e­bra­tion of the Passover (Mk 14:13 – 14; Lk 22:11).

St. Mark and The Lion

The vioce of the lion is the sym­bol of St. Mark for two reasons:

1. He begins his Holy Gospel by describ­ing John the Bap­tist as a lion roar­ing in the desert (Mk 1:3).
2. His famous story with lion, as related to us by Severus Ebn-​El-​Mokafa:
   Once a lion and lioness appeared to John Mark and his father Arostalis while they were trav­el­ing in Jor­dan. The father was very scared and begged his son to escape, while he awaited his fate. John Mark assured his father that Jesus Christ would save them and began to pray. The two beasts fell dead and as a result of this mir­a­cle, the father believed in Christ.

Preach­ing with the Apostles

At first, St. Mark accom­pa­nied St. Peter on his mis­sion­ary jour­neys inside Jerusalem and Judea. Then he accom­pa­nied St. Paul and St. Barn­abas on their first mis­sion­ary jour­ney to Anti­och, Cyprus and Asia Minor, but for some rea­son or another he left them and returned home (Acts 13:13). On their sec­ond trip, St. Paul refused to take him along because he left them on the pre­vi­ous mis­sion; for this rea­son St. Barn­abas was sep­a­rated from St. Paul and went to Cyprus with his cousin St. Mark (Acts 15:36 – 41). There, he departed in the Lord and St. Mark buried him. After­wards, St. Paul needed St. Mark with him and they both preached in Colosse (Col 4:10), Rome (Phil 24; 2 Tim 4:11) and per­haps in Venice.

In Africa

St. Mark’s real labor lays in Africa. He left Rome to Pen­tapo­lis, where he was born. After plant­ing the seeds of faith and per­form­ing many mir­a­cles he trav­eled to Egypt, through the Oasis, the desert of Libya, Upper Egypt and then entered Alexan­dria from its east­ern gate in 61 A.D.

On his arrival, the strap of his san­dal was loose. He went to a cob­bler to mend it. When the cob­bler — Ani­anos — took an awl to work on it, he acci­den­tally pierced his hand and cried aloud “O One God”. At this utter­ance, St. Mark rejoiced and after mirac­u­lously heal­ing the man’s wound, took courage and began to preach to the hun­gry ears of his con­vert. The spark was ignited and Ani­anos took the Apos­tle home with him. He and his fam­ily were bap­tized, and many oth­ers followed.

The spread of Chris­tian­ity must have been quite remark­able because pagans were furi­ous and ought St. Mark every­where. Smelling the dan­ger, the Apos­tle ordained a bishop (Ani­anos), three priests and seven dea­cons to look after the con­gre­ga­tion if any­thing befell him. He left Alexan­dria to Berce, then to Rome, where he met St. Peter and St. Paul and remained there until their mar­tyr­dom in 64 A.D.

Upon return­ing to Alexan­dria in 65 AD, St. Mark found his peo­ple firm in faith and thus decided to visit Pen­tapo­lis. There, he spent two years preach­ing and per­form­ing mir­a­cles, ordain­ing bish­ops and priests, and win­ning more converts.

Finally he returned to Alexan­dria and was over­joyed to find that Chris­tians had mul­ti­plied so much that they were able to build a con­sid­er­able church in the sub­ur­ban dis­trict of Baucalis.

His Mar­tyr­dom

In the year 68 AD, Easter fell on the same day as the Ser­apis feast. The furi­ous hea­then mob had gath­ered in the Ser­apis tem­ple at Alexan­dria and then descended on the Chris­tians who were cel­e­brat­ing the Glo­r­ous Res­ur­rec­tion at Bau­calis. St. Mark was seized, dragged with a rope through the main streets of the city. Crowds were shout­ing “The ox must be led to Bau­calis,” a pre­cip­i­tous place full of rock where they fed the oxen that were used in the sac­ri­fice to idols. At night­fall the saint was thrown into prison, where he was cheered by the vision of an angel, strength­en­ing him say­ing, “Now your hour has come O Mark, the good min­is­ter, to receive your rec­om­pense. Be encour­aged, for your name has been writ­ten in the book of life.” When the angel dis­ap­peared, St. Mark thanked God for send­ing His angel to him. Sud­denly, the Sav­ior Him­self appeared and said to him, “Peace be to you Mark, my dis­ci­ple and evan­ge­list!” St. Mark started to shout, “O My Lord Jesus” but the vision disappeared.

On the fol­low­ing morn­ing prob­a­bly dur­ing the tri­umphal pro­ces­sion of Ser­apis he was again dragged around the city till death. His bloody flesh was torn, and it was their inten­tion to cre­mate his remains, but the wind blew and the rain fell in tor­rents and the pop­u­laces dis­perse. Chris­tians stole his body and secretly buried him in a grave that they had engraved on a rock under the altar of the church.

His Apos­tolic Acts

St. Mark was a broad-​minded Apos­tle. His min­istry was quite pro­duc­tive and cov­ered large field of activ­i­ties. These include:

• Preach­ing in Egypt, Pen­tapo­lis, Judea, Asia Minor, and Italy dur­ing which time he ordained bish­ops, priests, and deacons.
• Estab­lish­ing the “School of Alexan­dria” which defended Chris­tian­ity against philo­soph­i­cal school of Alexan­dria and con­ceived a large num­ber of great Fathers.
• Writ­ing the Divine Liturgy of the Holy Eucharist which was mod­i­fied later by St. Cyril to the Divine Liturgy known today as the Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril.