Homily for Palm Sunday, 2021
And they all left him and fled.
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
Who is the naked young man who adds his own little part to the drama of Our Lord’s agony and arrest in Gethsemane, and who courageously had kept following him, even though all the others had “left him and fled?”
Well, he has everything to do with the Passion Gospel we hear on this solemn Sunday. He wrote it!
Every inspired author shows something of himself in his narrative, so why not Mark? All the other evangelists do: Matthew tells of our Lord’s calling while he was at the tax table; Luke shows his physician’s attention to bodily detail; John bashfully calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Mark makes his somewhat wild, youthful appearance here, in his account of the inception of the Lord’s sufferings for our salvation.
Practically speaking, this is the beginning of St. Mark’s vocation as an evangelist. His mother was a devout follower of Jesus (maybe an Essene sympathizer) and some part of the garden of Gethsemane belonged to her. Young Mark was probably already in bed when the noise outside, practically in his family’s yard, woke him up, and throwing on a linen covering (the same word is in Greek also the word for “shroud.”), he ran outside. Obviously he already loved the Lord, because he had the courage to follow him when all his elders fled. But his nakedness kept him to keep going through the streets of Jerusalem once he had escaped without his covering. He went back inside. The Lord had other plans for him.
Mark based his Gospel on the first-hand accounts of St. Peter, whom he later served in Rome, but this scene is Mark’s own firsthand account, his own eye-witnessing. There is a later detail in the last chapter of his Gospel that gives one pause to wonder what else he had seen first-hand. There he writes that the holy women found a “young man” dressed in white linen sitting inside the tomb.
Now, this expression “young man” in Greek is neaniskos, the very same word he used to describe himself just two chapters earlier. These are the only times he uses this word. There he is, a young man in white, clothed as the Risen One had been in the same tomb, until he shed his linen shroud, and stood up in the glory of his risen body. A series of coincidences? Hardly. A writer of Mark’s brevity and concision carefully measured his vocabulary. (This kind of bracketing of similar events is called inclusion in biblical rhetoric. Mark uses this in other places as well. The evangelists were fine writers!)
Did Mark go inside, put on some new clothes and follow Jesus’ burial procession with the holy women, among whom was his mother in all likelihood? (The house of the Last Supper probably belonged to her also.) And did he stay around, when all the rest had left, as he did in the garden, and did he receive a reward for his courage in trying to follow the suffering Savior by joining an angel in announcing the Lord’s resurrection; or had he even witnessed it?
During this Holy Week, consider how each one of the faithful follows the progress of the Master’s Passion, and each in his own way. Many in those days had seen the Lord’s works and had heard his words; each experienced the undeniable attraction of the Savior and most had loved him at one point or another, or even continually. Every soul who made contact with him would be a story in itself.
And so today, the curious stirring from sleep of a young man and his ardent evaluation of the events he saw became the beginning of a heavenly, powerful intervention in human affairs: the revelation of the Gospel according to St. Mark. The details may seem homely, unruly, embarrassing for Mark at first, but the designs of the merciful Heart of Jesus are truly complete and intentional.
What is true of Mark is also true of each one of us, for each one in the measure of each. Not a moment of a day or night, not an instant of sleeping or waking is not contained in the Redeemer’s plan for our happiness and holiness. It may seem a bit mundane or a bit random, but he knows and wills the innumerable paths that connect our ways with his. Then we will trust in him and not fear to follow him all the way to the end.
As we meditate on the Lord’s saving death and burial and rising, let us confidently assert that these mysteries of his are also ours, just as they belonged to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Then we will begin to act on this truth, and so bear much fruit in the Body of Christ as did the holy apostle (for such the Greeks call him) and evangelist Mark. April 25 is the Feast of St. Mark, which always falls in the Easter season. Let us celebrate him with special affection this year as we follow the Lord with him. (I wonder who has Mark as one of his baptismal names? He has been with me quite a while.)