Your Daily Martyr

YOUR DAILY MARTYR
Living With The Daily Martyrology of the Church

“Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink? … My chalice indeed you shall drink!” (Matthew 20:22-23).

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

"The Roman Martyrology is an official and accredited record, on the pages of which are set forth in simple and brief, but impressive words, the glorious deeds of the Soldiers of Christ in all ages of the Church ; of the illustrious Heroes and Heroines of the Cross, whom her solemn verdict has beatified or canonized" (Taken from the "Introduction" from The Roman Martyrology).

The Roman Martyrology is, like the Roman Missal and the Roman Breviary, an official liturgical book of the Catholic Church. It provides an extensive but not exhaustive list of the saints recognized by the Church. The Roman Martyrology was first published in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII, who in the year before had decreed the revision of the calendar that is called, after him, the Gregorian Calendar. A second edition was published in the same year. The third edition was made obligatory wherever the Roman Rite was in use.

In 1630 Pope Urban VIII ordered a new edition. 1748 saw the appearance of a revised edition by Pope Benedict XIV, who personally worked on the corrections: he suppressed some names, such as those of Clement of Alexandria and Sulpicius Severus, but kept others that had been objected to, such as that of Pope Siricius. Since then, the Martyrology has remained essentially unchanged, save for the addition of new saints canonized during the intervening years.

THE HONOR ROLL OF MARTYRS
for April 25th
taken from the entry for the day
from the Roman Martyrology

At Alexandria, in the year 68, the blessed Evangelist St. Mark. He was the disciple and interpreter of the Apostle Peter. He wrote his Gospel at the prayer of the brethren at Rome. He took it with him and went to Egypt, where he was the first man who proclaimed Christ at Alexandria, and where he founded that church. He was afterward arrested as a believer in Christ, bound with cords, and dragged over stones to his grievous suffering. Then he was remanded to prison, where he was comforted first by a visitation of angels and then by the Lord Himself appearing unto him, and was called unto the kingdom of Heaven in the 8th year of Nero.

At Rome, the Greater Litanies, instituted in sixth century by Pope St. Gregory the Great, take place at St Peter’s Church.

Upon the same day, were likewise born into the better life At Syracuse, the holy martyrs St. Evodius, St. Hermogenes and St. Kallistas. They were brothers and sister.
At Antioch, in the year 479, the holy martyr St. Stephen, Patriarch of that see, who suffered many things at the hands of the heretics who assailed the Council of Chalcedon, and was cast into the river Orontes, in the time of the Emperor Zeno.

There likewise, in the second century, the holy deacons St. Philo and St. Agathopodes.

At Alexandria, St. Anian, Patriarch of that see. He was the disciple of St. Mark.

April 25th
The Martyr of the Day

ST. MARK THE EVANGELIST

Martyred in the First Century, around the year 68

St. Mark was of Jewish extraction. The style of his Gospel abounding with Hebraisms, shows that he was by birth a Jew, and that the Hebrew language was more natural to him than the Greek. His acts say he was of Cyrenaica, and Bede from them adds, of the race of Aaron. Papias, quoted by Eusebius, St. Augustine, Theodoret, and Bede say, he was converted by the apostles after Christ’s resurrection.

St. Irenæus calls him the disciple and interpreter of St. Peter; and, according to Origen and St. Jerome, he is the same Mark whom St. Peter calls his son. By his office of interpreter to St. Peter, some understood that St. Mark was the author of the style of his epistles; others that he was employed as a translator into Greek or Latin, of what the apostle had written in his own tongue, as occasion might require it.

St. Jerome and some others take him to be the same with that John, surnamed Mark, son to the sister of St. Barnabas: but it is generally believed that they were different persons: and that the latter was with St. Paul in the East, at the same time that the Evangelist was at Rome, or at Alexandria.

According to Papias, and St. Clement of Alexandria, he wrote his Gospel at the request of the Romans; who, as they relate, desired to have that committed to writing which St. Peter had taught them by word of mouth. Mark, to whom this request was made, did accordingly set himself to recollect what he had by long conversation learned from St. Peter; for it is affirmed by some, that he had never seen our Savior in the flesh. St. Peter rejoiced at the affection of the faithful; and having revised the work, approved of it, and authorized it to be read in the religious assemblies of the faithful. Hence it might be that, as we learn from Tertullian, some attributed this Gospel to St. Peter himself.

Many judge, by comparing the two Gospels, that St. Mark abridged that of St. Matthew; for he relates the same things, and often uses the same words; but he adds several particular circumstances, and changes the order of the narration, in which he agrees with St. Luke and St. John. He relates two histories not mentioned by St. Matthew, namely, that of the widow giving two mites, and that of Christ’s appearing to the two disciples going to Emmaus. St. Augustine calls him the abridger of St. Matthew. But Ceillier and some others think nothing clearly proves that he made use of St. Matthew’s Gospel.

This evangelist is concise in his narrations, and writes with a most pleasing simplicity and elegance. St. Chrysostom admires the humility of St. Peter (we may add also of his disciple St. Mark), when he observes, that his evangelist makes no mention of the high commendations which Christ gave that apostle on his making that explicit confession of his being the Son of God; neither does he mention his walking on the water; but gives at full length the history of St. Peter’s denying his Master, with all its circumstances. He wrote his Gospel in Italy; and, in all appearance, before the year of Christ, 49.

St. Peter sent his disciples from Rome to found other churches. Some moderns say St. Mark founded that of Aquileia. It is certain at least that he was sent by St. Peter into Egypt, and was by him appointed bishop of Alexandria, (which, after Rome, was accounted the second city of the world,) as Eusebius, St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, and others assure us. Pope Gelasius, in his Roman council, Palladius, and the Greeks, universally add, that he finished his course at Alexandria, by a glorious martyrdom.

St. Peter left Rome, and returned into the East in the ninth year of Claudius, and forty-ninth of Christ. About that time St. Mark went first into Egypt, according to the Greeks. The Oriental Chronicle, published by Abraham Eckellensis, places his arrival at Alexandria only in the seventh year of Nero, and sixtieth of Christ. Both which accounts agree with the relation of his martyrdom, contained in the ancient acts published by the Bollandists, which were made use of by Bede and the Oriental Chronicle, and seem to have been extant in Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries.

By them we are told that St. Mark landed at Cyrene, in Pentapolis, a part of Libya bordering on Egypt, and, by innumerable miracles, brought many over to the Faith, and demolished several temples of the idols. He likewise carried the Gospel into other provinces of Libya, into Thebais, and other parts of Egypt. This country was heretofore of all others the most superstitious: but the benediction of God, promised to it by the prophets, was plentifully showered down upon it during the ministry of this apostle.

He employed twelve years in preaching in these parts, before he, by a particular call of God, entered Alexandria, where he soon assembled a very numerous church, of which it is thought says Fleury, that the Jewish converts then made up the greater part. And it is the opinion of St. Jerome and Eusebius, that these were the Therapeutes described by Philo, and the first founders of the ascetic life in Egypt.

The prodigious progress of the Faith in Alexandria stirred up the heathens against this Galilæan. The apostle therefore left the city, having ordained St. Anianus bishop, in the eighth year of Nero, of Christ the sixty-second, and returned to Pentapolis, where he preached two years, and then visited his church of Alexandria, which he found increased in Faith and grace, as well as in numbers. He encouraged the faithful and again withdrew: the Oriental Chronicle says to Rome. On his return to Alexandria, the heathens called him a magician, on account of his miracles, and resolved upon his death. God, however, concealed him long from them.

At last, on the pagan feast of the idol Serapis, some who were employed to discover the holy man, found him uttering to God the prayer of the oblation, or the mass. Overjoyed to find him in their power, they seized him, tied his feet with cords, and dragged him about the streets, crying out, that the ox must be led to Bucoles, a place near the sea, full of rocks and precipices, where probably oxen were fed. This happened on Sunday, the 24th of April, in the year of Christ 68, of Nero the fourteenth, about three years after the death of SS. Peter and Paul.

The saint was thus dragged the whole day, staining the stones with his blood, and leaving the ground strewed with pieces of his flesh; all the while he ceased not to praise and thank God for his sufferings. At night he was thrown into prison, in which God comforted him by two visions, which Bede has also mentioned in his true martyrology. The next day the infidels dragged him, as before, till he happily expired on the 25th of April, on which day the Oriental and Western churches keep his festival.

The Christians gathered up the remains of his mangled body, and buried them at Bucoles, where they afterwards usually assembled for prayer. His body was honorably kept there, in a church built on the spot, in 310; and towards the end of the fourth age, the holy priest Philoromus made a pilgrimage thither from Galatia to visit this saint’s tomb, as Palladius recounts. His body was still honored at Alexandria, under the Mahometans, in the eighth age, in a marble tomb. It is said to have been conveyed by stealth to Venice, in 815.

Bernard, a French monk, who travelled over the East in 870, writes, that the body of St. Mark was not then at Alexandria, because the Venetians had carried it to their isles. It is said to be deposited in the Doge’s stately rich chapel of St. Mark, in a secret place, that it may not be stolen, under one of the great pillars. This saint is honored by that republic with extraordinary devotion as principal patron.