St. Mark the secretary of St. Peter and Bishop of Alexandria

Catholic Homilies by Fr Linus Clovis

There is a reference to St. Mark whose feast we celebrate today and St. Paul who associates him with his first missionary journey. We know very little about the lives of the apostles beyond what is related in the gospels and certainly the same for the Evangelists. What information we have, we depend upon the tradition to give us most of it. We know that Mark was closely associated with St. Peter and in some places St Irenaeus calls him St. Peter’s secretary. St. Peter preached and it’s interesting for the fact that St. Peter was the prince of the apostles; we only have 2 letters from him. He preached extensively in Antioch and then later in Rome, then according to St Irenaeus the people of Rome begged Peter to put down something, to write a gospel about the life of Our Lord, which Peter didn’t do. Mark did and so Mark expresses the life of Christ as seen by St. Peter.