The Feast of St. Mark (April 25, 2021)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

“Speaking the truth in love, grow into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, author of the second canonical Gospel which most biblical scholars date to be the first in chronological order. St. Mark is considered the patron saint of Barristers, the city of Venice, and the country of Egypt.

There is some question as to the identity of the author of the second Gospel. Tradition posits him to be John Mark. It is speculated that John Mark is the man who carried water to the house where the Last Supper was held. Others have also guessed that he was the man who fled the scene naked when Jesus was arrested (a detail included in Mark 14:51-52). Tradition also holds that St. Mark was martyred when he went as a missionary to Alexandria where the pagans tied a rope around his neck and dragged him around the city until he died.

St. Mark was a bishop and Evangelist. An Evangelist, broadly speaking, is one who carries the Good News of the Gospel to the world. The authors of the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are all model Evangelists because of their work. Because St. Mark served the Church in these capacities, we have an Epistle reading this morning that discusses the various charisms, or gifts, of the Church. But before we can talk about how these parts of Christ’s Body work together in harmony, we must first look at how we, as the Church, relate to Our Lord Jesus Christ.

In St. John 15, Our Lord employs agricultural imagery that describes our relationship with him. He tells us that he is the vine, and the Father is the husbandsman or vinedresser. Vines are significant because they sustain and support branches. If you don’t have a healthy vine, you won’t have healthy branches. But when you have a healthy vine and healthy branches, the plant yields fruit.

So, in the analogy, we are the branches because we are entirely dependent on our Lord, the vine. Because we are pruned by our heavenly Father in his righteous and restorative discipline. Because our organic and life-giving union with our vine comes with the expectation that we bear fruit — fruit here referring to obedience, living within God’s design for us (and it’s not an accident that fruit is also the symbol for humanity’s fall; Adam and Eve sinned when they ate the fruit when they weren’t supposed to but we are called to bear fruit through obedience to God). We bear fruit when we obey God’s commandments which can be summarized in St. Paul’s Law of Love in Romans 13:8-10: “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” And this really is what connects to our Epistle: the relationship between the vinedresser, the vine and the branches, the Father, the Son, and the Church is one bound by love.

Because Christ loves us, he gives us gifts. And the beauty of these gifts he bestows on the Church is that, while we are unified by the Sacraments, by being “in Christ,” we are given diverse gifts for the upbuilding of the Church, the edifying of the Body. This isn’t a faceless, personalityless organization but an organic entity where each is allowed to be themselves, to function in the unique gifts God has given them. And when we do that, it benefits all of us and our common life together. The various gifts mentioned here in Ephesians include apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Each have their own functions though not necessarily without overlap. Apostles are bishops who are responsible for shepherding congregations in geographical areas. Prophets are those who preach the Word of Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins. Evangelists are those who bring the Gospel out into the world as the Church expands in time and space. Pastors work as undershepherds for their bishops by tending to local congregations. And teachers promulgate the Catholic faith by positively conveying the truth to God’s people and negatively by arguing against heresy and false teaching.

Yet these diverse charisms have a common goal: “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Note that our goal here is to grow into Christ. He is the template for what we should be. And we become like him not in isolation but in a richly endowed community through interaction with those who have different gifts.

This life within the community of the Body of Christ is contrasted against childishness—children are gullible and lack clarity to make a consistent stand on the truth. But a life within the community of the Church founded by Christ empowers us to withstand these forces.

There is one final aspect of life within this community that I think bears emphasizing and that is speaking the truth in love. Now, growing up, I always thought speaking the truth in love is something we do to get others to listen to us — if we’re nice enough, they’ll heed our words. now, I don’t think this is wrong per se but it’s not what St. Paul says here. “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” “Speaking the truth in love” is a participle phrase that modifies “we must grow up in every way into him who is the head.” By speaking truth in love, we become like Christ who extends to us a love we don’t deserve. Speaking truth in love, whatever our vocation within the Church, is a formative habit, a means by which we participate in the divine life: in showing love to the person we speak to, we become like him who is our head.

We live in a culture where we are often forced to choose one or the other: either choose speaking truth or choose love. The problem is that some enjoy “hot takes” that are intentionally provocative to rile other people up. Whether such takes are true, it really doesn’t matter because they lack love. Others think that love is stand offish and relativistic which is really self-seeking.

For St. Paul and the Evangelsits, the two are incomplete on their own. Truth and love must be wed together to be complete (“even if I speak with the tongues of angels but lack love, I am a resounding gong”). As our culture becomes increasingly divided and partisan, as the digital world enables us to hide behind our keyboards, and social media gives us the feeling of having a platform (or a soap box), it’s easy for us to forget the importance of love.

When we speak “truth” without love (if such a thing is even really possible) or we redefine love to mean something “standoffish,” we aren’t just affecting the other person with whom we are in conversation but actually impeding our own growth into Christ. “The medium is the message,” or, how we say something really impacts what we’re saying.

So, St. Mark and the Evangelists are models for us because even if we aren’t “evangelists” in a formal sense, all of us are called to proclaim the Gospel through our various vocations in this life. That proclamation is for the good of others, but it’s also for ourselves.So on this feast day, we should pray that each of us individually, and St. Paul’s as a church corporately, become a people and community where we speak truth in love, no just because we care for the other but because we want to be like him who is our Head, Jesus Christ.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.