Holy and Glorious Apostle Barnabas of the Seventy

Saint Barnabas the Apostle

Today in the Orthodox Church, the eleventh of June, is the feast-day of Mitrofan (Chang) of Beijing and the two hundred twenty one martyrs with him in China, who were killed in the Yihetuan uprising. The Orthodox Christians of Beijing, originally Russian Cossacks of Albazin who intermarried with the indigenous Evenki people and were put under the Manchu Banner system, may be considered the spiritual heirs of Guo Ziyi, the Nestorian Christian general under the Tang Emperor Minghuang. I say this not in the sense that they were hæretical, but in the sense that they understood themselves as being fully Chinese and fully Christian. They were Chinese patriots faithful to the Qing Emperor, just as Guo Ziyi was loyal to the Tang Emperor.

But the connexion of China to Syria today is also significant, in that the Chinese Albazinians whose Orthodox faith led them to martyrdom was intimately connected with a Silk Road history. The Gate of Saint Thomas which that Apostle used to spread the Gospel from Damascus through Persia all the way to Kerala in India, was also used to bear the Gospel to the Chinese through the efforts of the monk Alopen (or Aluoben 阿罗本). The bearing of the Gospel over the Northern route, the Tea Road, by the Cossacks from Russia, was the next stage in that same mission.

The source and fount of that mission is also celebrated today, because the Orthodox martyrs of China share a feast-day with the Apostle Bartholomaîos of the Twelve and also with the Holy Apostle Barnabas, ‘a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith: and much people was added unto the Lord’. One of the Seventy whose deeds are committed to us by Luke the Evangelist in his Book of the Acts in Holy Scripture, he is membered particularly in Antioch and Cyprus.

Saint Barnabas [Gk. Βαρνάβας, Ar. Bârnâbâ بارنابا, Heb. Bar-Nabā’ בר-נבא], born Joseph, was a Jewish native of Cyprus, of the tribe of Levi, and may have been an uncle of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark. Despite having been an observant Jew before his conversion, Barnabas belonged firmly to the ‘radical’ party in the Early Church, the party that believed the message of Christ was meant to be spread amongst the Gentiles without their having to first conform to the whole body of Jewish law. He is first mentioned in Acts 4, just after the disciples divided up all things equally amongst themselves so that no one had want: ‘Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.’ Barnabas was one of those who possessed land and estates near Jerusalem, and he led by example. He sold all of these and gave the proceeds to the community without holding anything back.

Saint Barnabas next appears in the ninth chapter of Acts, after Apostle Paul – then Saul, hitherto an enemy of the followers of Jesus – was healed of his blindness in Damascus. It was Barnabas who convinced the other disciples that Paul was no longer their enemy, but a friend: ‘But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.’

From then, Saint Barnabas appears most prominently in Acts as a helper and fellow-traveller of Saint Paul. In the eleventh chapter we are told he was sent to Antioch by the disciples in Jerusalem in order to encourage the believers there, and he worked there together with Peter and Paul for several years. His name is mentioned alongside both of the Leaders of the Apostles in both cities. Barnabas was also in charge, along with Paul, of sending money for the relief of the needy Church of Jerusalem from the comparatively-wealthy Antioch during a period of famine. While they were in Jerusalem, Herod slew James the son of Zebedee, and then had Apostle Peter taken to prison together with the other chief apostles and placed under guard – both of which actions were calculated to increase his local popularity. An angel of the Lord, however, led Barnabas, Paul and Peter out of the prison. They hid at the home of ‘Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark’, who was Barnabas’s relative. When they returned from Jerusalem, Barnabas and Paul took with them this same John Mark.

Led by the Holy Spirit, Saints Barnabas and Paul left Antioch together for Cyprus to build up the Church, accompanied by John Mark. They were stuck for some time at Paphos where they were confronted by a sorcerer named Elymas. Elymas was stricken blind for a year after having attempted to prevent Barnabas and Paul from speaking with the Roman governor of Cyprus, named Sergius the Lesser, and then attempting to discredit the apostles with the governor.

They then travelled to Pergamos in Anatolia and from there to Pisidian Antioch, where they preached first to the Jews, and then to the Gentiles. Jealous of their success in preaching to great throngs of the Gentiles, the Jews began to circulate rumours about Barnabas and Paul to the Roman authorities, and had them expelled from the city. Barnabas and Paul made their way from thence to Ikonion (Konya), where they preached in the synagogues. They swayed a number of both the Jews and the Greeks to belief in Christ, but the remaining Jews and Gentiles both rose up against them and planned to stone them to death, and so they withdrew to Lystra to preach the Gospel there.

While in Lystra there was a man who met them, who had been born lame, and whose feet were crippled from birth. Saint Paul, looking upon him, commanded the man to stand up and walk, and stand and walk he did. When the people of Lystra saw this, they were much afraid, and began to worship Saint Barnabas as Zeus, and Saint Paul as Hermes. The pagan priest of Zeus went and gathered cattle and garlands with which to make sacrifice to them, but Saints Barnabas and Paul, on hearing of this, went out into the crowd and tore their clothes, telling them that they were but passionate men like themselves, and through their preaching and healing sought only to turn them away from vain sacrifices towards the living God. The people listened to them, and did not offer sacrifice. However, several anti-Christian messengers from Pisidian Antioch and Ikonion came to Lystra and swayed the people against Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas; and indeed they took Paul and stoned him nearly to death, and had him thrown out of the city. The disciples protected Saint Paul’s body, though, and he went back into the city and took Barnabas back with him to Derbeia.

Saint Barnabas was also at the forefront of the deliberations over whether or not the Gentiles could accept the faith of Christ without instruction in the Jewish law, including circumcision. The Book of Acts tells us that, at the Council of Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas were both of the party that said the Gentiles could be saved without the entirety of the Law and without being circumcised. The Council agreed with them, though it retained the Mosaic strictures against fornication, idolatry, eating blood and eating meat from animals that had been strangled.

Barnabas and Paul continued to teach and preach in Antioch, and eventually Saint Paul asked Saint Barnabas if he would take another voyage with him, to visit the churches they had set up in their previous voyages and see how they were faring. Saint Barnabas agreed, but wanted to take John Mark with him. Paul was not amenable to this idea, because Mark had not accompanied them into Pamphylia. Paul and Barnabas fell out with each other over this dispute, and Barnabas took Mark and left for Cyprus; while Paul took Silas with him and ministered to the churches in Syria and Cilicia. It would appear that the rift between Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas was later healed, since Paul mentions Barnabas in favourable terms in his first epistle to the Corinthians.

At any rate, after the events related to us in the Book of the Acts, Barnabas continued his mission in Cyprus, where he multiplied the number of the believers, and undertook voyages into Italy, being perhaps the first of the Apostles to preach in Rome and later setting up a church in Mediolanum – that is, Milan. Upon his return to Cyprus, his fellow Jews on the isle who did not accept Christ instigated the pagans against him. The traditional narrative has it that Barnabas was tortured and then stoned to death at Salamis; another tradition says that he was placed in a halter and then dragged through the streets before being burned to death. In either event, Barnabas’s body was found unharmed by his kinsman Mark, who buried him in a secluded cave that was anchored by the roots of a carob tree. Mark placed in his arms a copy of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, which the Apostle had copied by his own hand.

According to Church historian Dr Andrea Mitsidi, in the year 478 a certain Archbishop Anthemios of Cyprus was visited three times in a vision by Saint Barnabas, who led him to the cave in which John Mark had buried him. The wondering Archbishop, upon awakening, found the carob tree as it had been shown to him, and upon digging among its roots found the cave, and found also the intact incorrupt body of the holy Apostle, still hugging to him the Gospel of Saint Matthew. This Gospel, the Archbishop Anthemios took with him and presented to the Emperor Zēnō. The Emperor thereupon granted the three Imperial privileges to the Church of Cyprus: the porphyry mantle which is worn by the Archbishop of Cyprus on feast-days; the cinnabar ink with which the Archbishop of Cyprus affixes his signature; and the Imperial sceptre which the Archbishop of Cyprus is permitted to carry. The autocephaly of the Church of Cyprus was thereby assured.

The holy Apostle Barnabas is therefore remembered with particular fondness by the Orthodox Churches of Cyprus and of Antioch, in both of which cities he was active and instrumental in establishing the Christian faith. Holy Apostle Barnabas, tireless servant of God in the spread of the Gospel in Cyprus and in Syria and in Asia Minor, pray unto Christ who established the world that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion of Apostle Barnabas, Tone 3:

Holy Apostles Bartholomew and Barnabas,
Entreat the merciful God
To grant our souls forgiveness of transgressions.

Holy Hierarch Willibald the Pilgrim of Eichstätt

Saint Willibald of Eichstätt

Today in the Orthodox Church we commemorate Saint Willibald, the venerable Benedictine and bishop of Eichstätt who wrote the Life of our great and beloved Western Church Father Saint Boniface, who was also his maternal uncle. He is also the first known hajji – the first successful pilgrim to the Holy Land – of the English folk.

Willibald was born around 703 in Southampton, the son of Richard of Wessex and his devoted wife Winna, a descendant of Cerdic and the sister of Saint Boniface. He had two siblings who also became saints: a younger sister Wealdburg of Heidenheim, and an elder brother Wynnebald of Heidenheim. As is described in the hagiography of Saint Richard, when he was only three years old, Willibald came down with a deathly illness – a spasm of the limbs and lungs that no natural means could cure. His despairing parents wrapped him in a blanket, and took the toddler Willibald out of the house in the dead of night, laying him at the foot of a rood which lay at a crossroads. Richard and Winna earnestly prayed to God for their son’s life, promising to make him a monk if his life were spared. By God’s grace Willibald did recover, and true to their word, Richard and Winna entrusted their son two years afterward as an oblate to Ecgbald, the abbot at Waltham.

Willibald was a most self-effacing, earnest and diligent student in that monastery, and his thoughts and heart were all bent upon God – still he did not become a monk, but rather Ecgbald allowed him time and space to think on his decision. At last in 721, his father embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome to visit the tombs of the Apostles, and to the Holy Land: and both of his sons, the elder Wynnebald and the younger Willibald, went with him. They set forth across the English Channel and went across France, visiting a number of holy sites along the way. Richard, however, fell ill en route, and was brought to Lucca where he succumbed to his illness and reposed. Richard of Wessex is still venerated as a saint in the Basilica di San Frediano in Italy. It was left to his sons to complete their pilgrimage.

Both sons successfully came to Rome, where they each at last took monastic vows and entered the Benedictine Order. In Rome they stayed and lived in holiness for two years further, and after that the elder brother Wynnebald was obliged to return to England. The younger, Willibald, took a couple of companions and set forth from Rome to the Levant – the blessed places in which our Lord had walked, preached, taught and healed. Willibald and his companions for the most part were fed on a sailor’s diet of hard bread and water, and to this they added the ascetic discipline of sleeping on the bare ground when they made land. They sailed first to Cyprus, and then to Syria. At Homs, Saint Willibald was taken by the Muslim soldiery as a spy, and was locked in fetters and cast into a donjon for several months. At last his Muslim captors began to admire the sweetness of his temperament and the equanimity with which he bore his treatment, and soon they were convinced of the truth of his tale. They spoke a word in the ear of the Khalif, and from him procured Saint Willibald’s release.

With due gratitude Willibald resumed his pilgrimage. He and his companions decided upon a route that followed Our Lord’s earthly course of life, and therefore began his sojourn in an-Nâsira where, as the Anglican rector Rev’d Alban Butler put it: ‘our saint passed there some days with his companions in the continual contemplation of the infinite mercies of God in the great mystery of the incarnation; and the sight of the place in which it was wrought drew from his eyes streams of devout tears during all the time of his stay in that town.’

From there he fared to Bayt Lahm and then into Ægypt, following the way by which the infant Christ fled from Herod and meditating upon our young Lord’s sufferings as a stranger there. Returning to Bayt Lahm, he ventured from there to Qana, to Kafr Nâhûm and to al-Quds. He spent a great deal of time in al-Quds meditating upon the wonders and teachings of our Lord in that city prior to His Crucifixion, in memory of which he went to Golgotha, and in memory of Whose Ascension he stayed at Jabal al-Zaytûn. Saint Willibald spent much time among the Palestinian monasteries and lavras and eremitical cells, the better to admire, study and imitate the holy ways of life he saw the Orthodox holy men following. Again in the words of Rev’d Butler: ‘ The tender and lively sentiments of devotion with which his fervent contemplation on the holy mysteries of our redemption inspired him at the sight of all those sacred places, filled his devout soul with heavenly consolations, and made on it strong and lasting impressions.’

He had sojourned seven years in the Holy Land; as he was preparing to leave from ‘Akkâ, however, his weak childhood constitution made itself felt as he again fell ill – though through patience and prayer and the grace of God he was able to recover. However, Saint Willibald and his companions arrived safe in Italy at their journey’s end in 728.

Willibald took up residence at the Abbazia di Montecassino (the very same abbey founded by Saint Benedict of Nursia), where he followed the way of life that he had observed and tried to imitate in Palestine; the abbey benefitted greatly from his hard work and humble example. The monks of Montecassino appointed him sacristan first; then dean with responsibility over ten monks; and afterwards the trusted position of abbey porter, in which office he spent eight years. In 738, Saint Boniface made his third journey to Rome to see Pope Gregory III. Upon learning that his nephew was living as a monk in Rome, he asked Gregory III to send Willibald with him to assist in his missionary efforts among the Germans. Pope Gregory III sent for Willibald and was instantly impressed with the monk, taking particular delight in hearing of his travels and his life in Rome. (Gregory himself was a Syrian by origin.) At the end of their interview, Gregory acquainted Willibald with his uncle’s request for his help in converting the German folk. Willibald wanted to tarry to inform his abbot of his mission, but Pope Gregory assured him that his word alone would suffice, and sent Willibald off with his blessing to join his uncle.

At this point, Saint Boniface was in Thüringen, and it was there that Willibald joined him. He assisted his uncle in converting (or re-converting) the populace, correcting heresies among the people, and bringing monastic communities into Germany from England and Italy. Saint Boniface’s efforts met with great success, which his nephew assuredly helped to bring about. In 746, in Salzburg, Saint Boniface made his nephew bishop of Eichstätt, somewhat against his will. However, his patience, meekness, humility and charity all made him a good match for the office. In Heidenheim, the new bishop established a double Benedictine house, over which he placed as abbot his elder brother Wynnebald. He was in particular an advocate of the Benedictine Rule as he had experienced it at Montecassino – but was also a mild, caring and fatherly archpastor to the laymen of his flock. He wandered the last forty-five years of his life, not on pilgrimage for himself, but to care for the image of Christ among the Germans under his care. He paid great attention to even the least of these, and paid little attention his own comfort, for he kept the fasts and prayer cycles of the church with great regularity and intensity. Even so, he lived to the great old age of eighty-seven. He reposed in the Lord in Eichstätt in 790.

He was buried in Eichstätt, and his tomb was the site of a number of wondrous healings. He was venerated locally almost at once as a saint, and this was recognised officially by Rome in 938. The cathedral at Eichstätt was completed in 1269, and Willibald’s relics were translated by Bishop Hildebrand into a reliquary urn in the cathedral.

Holy Hierarch Willibald, faithful monk and pilgrim and gentle archpastor of the German people, we beseech you pray to Christ our God to save our souls!

Post-colonial, non-aligned Orthodoxy

From left to right: HH Abp Chrysostomos II of Cyprus; HH Patriarch John X of Antioch;
HH Patriarch Theodoros II of Alexandria; and HH Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem

I failed to comment on this story when it first surfaced a month and a half ago, but I really should have done and am doing so now. His Holiness Chrysostomos II, Archbishop of Cyprus; His Holiness John X, Patriarch of Antioch; His Holiness Theodoros II, Patriarch of Alexandria; and His Holiness Theophilos III, Patriarch of Jerusalem met on 18 April in Cyprus to discuss various ecclesiological issues – first among which was the Ukraine question. In the overall miasma of inter-Orthodox news surrounding the Moscow-Constantinople schism and the attendant ecclesiological and political issues it’s dusted up, this news item might seem like ‘small potatoes’ and somewhat outdated now. It’s not.

On 18^th April 2019, at the invitation of His Beatitude Archbishop Chrysostomos II of New Justiniana and All Cyprus, Their Beatitudes Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria and All Africa, Patriarch John X of Antioch and All the East, and Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem visited Cyprus.

Discussed at the meeting were problems of inter-Orthodox relations, as well as the plight of Christians in the Middle East.

At the results of the meeting, a joint communiqué was issued, noting that Their Beatitudes the Primates of the Orthodox Churches discussed various problems “that arose after granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.” “His Beatitude Chrysostomos, Archbishop of Cyprus, briefed them [the three Primates] on his personal initiative of mediation. After listening to His Beatitude, the Primates of the three Churches gave their support for his initiative to carry it for the good of the unity of the Orthodox Church in Christ Jesus. In this regard, Their Holiness and Beatitude called upon all people concerned to work, on the one hand, to achieve Eucharistic unity, which constitutes the fullness of the Church in Christ Jesus, and on the other hand, to protect the faithful, their churches and their monasteries against all forms of transgressions and all acts of violence coming from any side, whatever the causes and motives are,” the communiqué states, in particular.

The Primates of the four Orthodox Churches also expressed “their sadness at the indifference of various countries and centers of power regarding the fate” of the Archbishops of Aleppo, Paul Yazigi of the Church of Antioch and Youhanna Ibrahim of the Syrian Jacobite Church, who were abducted six years ago, on 22nd April 2013.

During a private meeting, Patriarch John X of Antioch and Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem “discussed in a spirit of sincerity, brotherhood and love, and exchanged views on the issue related to both Churches. They expressed their sincere determination and good intention to overcome these problems in the nearest future, in order for both Churches to reach the sought Eucharistic communion.”

As Dcn Methodius Steve Hayes at Khanya astutely noted before, there seems to be a gæopolitical split within Orthodoxy presently. We have heard from the Œcumenical Patriarch, who speaks for the America-centric ‘First World Church’. And we have heard from Patriarch Kirill, who seems to speak for the post-Soviet ‘Second World Church’. But with regard to the rest of the Orthodox world, which includes three of the historical five offices of the Pentarchy and the fastest-growing segment of the Orthodox Church globally, there seems to be a very different consensus emerging that is not easily digestible to New Rome and Third Rome imperial mythologies, nor to simplistic dichotomies of Slav versus Greek. Again I will note: Third World means Third World. It does not mean appropriating Third World language to rationalise a Second World nation’s desires to join the First.

Dcn Steve kindly provided some much-needed hints as to the nature of this emerging Third World consensus within the Orthodox Church. The Third World churches are concerned with avoiding a schism, with recapitulating the traditional ecclesiology of the Church, and (not least) with preserving civil order outside and among competing superpowers. There is very little patience among the other Churches with the political machinations of the Russian state, but if push comes to shove they will side with the established canonical Church bodies over the newer politically-motivated ones: just as Jamâl ‘Abd an-Nâsr and Salâma Mûsâ reluctantly sided with the Soviets more of the time than they sided with the West.

Let us consider. The four primates of Orthodox local churches who met in Cyprus represent, respectively, Cyprus (former British colony; partly occupied by Turkey), Syria (former French colony; partly occupied by Dâ‘iš and al-Qâ‘ida), Ægypt (former British colony) and Palestine (former British colony; occupied by Israel). The current discussion takes place within the context of a new Cold War between the United States and Russia; and the substance of the discussion has to do with the very relevant question of ecclesiastical independence from meddling by great power politics. Note how the statement put out by the four primates emphasises canonicity, Eucharistic unity, impartial defence of the powerless against attacks (including the situation in Syria and the near-forgotten plights of Mar Gregorios Yûhannâ Ibrâhîm and Met Paul Yâzigî!) and strategies of third-party mediation – not in a naïve Pollyanna way, but as a strategy to avoid coöptation by great power politics.

One further note: the histories of all of these countries – Cyprus and Ægypt particularly – are deeply intertwined with the Non-Aligned Movement; and in Cyprus particularly the rôle of the Orthodox Church in articulating and promoting Non-Aligned goals under the government of Archbishop Makarios III was not insignificant. Note how it is the Archbishop of Cyprus who seems to be taking a leading rôle even now! This is a valuable aspect of our recent historical witness as a Church that tends to be sidelined in discussions which centre the political witness of the Church on either Moscow or Constantinople. These are interesting times indeed, and the three Patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria seem to be carrying forward a true Gospel light and the spirit of Christ in a time darkened by the fog of cold war. May God protect them and grant them many years!

Holy Thursday – Apostle and Evangelist Mark

Holy, glorious and all-laudable Apostle and Evangelist Mark

Yesterday we commemorated Great and Holy Wednesday and the feast of Saint Mellitus of Canterbury. It seems particularly fitting that the feasts of Saint Mellitus and Saint Mark should fall so close together; and even more fitting that the feast of Saint Mark this year falls on the remembrance of the Last Supper, the night in which our Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed.

Saint Mark, a Cyrenian Second Temple Jew and a nephew of the Cypriot-Jewish Saint Yousef bar-Nehmâ of the Seventy, lived with his mother Miryam in Jerusalem when Our Lord called him out to become His disciple. A junior of Saint Peter, at the time of Christ’s death, Mark was still a very young man (νεανίσκος). On the very first Great and Holy Thursday, the night in which Christ broke bread with His disciples for the Passover and was betrayed at Gethsemane by Judas, the Roman soldiery lay hold of Mark, who was wearing a linen cloth. The soldiers tore the cloth off of his body and Mark, naked, ran away from them.

Saint Mark was very close to Apostle Peter as well as to his kinsman Saint Yousef bar-Nehmâ mentioned above. After the Ascension of Our Lord, Mark worked closely with both of them to spread the news of Christ’s Resurrection. After the conversion of Apostle Paul, Mark was one of the Christians he met with in Antioch, and the two of them also worked closely together thereafter. He returned to his kinsmen’s home in Cyprus where he traversed the island with his two companions from east to west, preaching the Gospel from the Jewish synagogues. Mark was present when Saint Paul temporarily blinded the sorcerer (mágos) and false prophet Elymas bar-Yeshua before the proconsul at Paphos, as recounted in the Book of Acts.

After this, Mark embarked on a journey to Ægypt, where he founded the church in Alexandria. He is considered the founder of the Coptic Church, as well as of the Orthodox Church there. He made additional travels to Cyprus and to Mesopotamia; from which place Saint Peter sent a letter to the Christians of Asia Minor in which he calls Mark his son. Mark was also present in Asia Minor for a time himself – he was under the rule of Saint Timothy in Ephesus, and accompanied him to Rome, from which city he is believed to have written his Gospel between 62 and 68 AD. The audience for which this Gospel was intended is disputed: Church tradition holds that it was primarily intended for an audience of Gentiles, but Mark’s use of Aramaic idioms and imagery suggest instead that it may have been meant for an audience that included Palestinian Jews.

Travelling once more to Ægypt, Mark established the catechetical school at Alexandria which produced Holy Father Athenagoras, Saint Pantainos, Clement, Origen, Pope Heraklas, Pope Saint Dionysios and Saint Gregory the Wonderworker of Neocæsarea. Mark’s school, by the way, comes in for some rather hard ribbing by my classical Hebrew instructor Dr Paul Tarazi, who is very much not a fan of the sorts of speculative philosophical and theological turns for which these Ægyptians became known. He also makes much of the irony that it is his own people, the Arabs, who with their infatuation for philosophy ‘spoiled’ us here in the West!

At any rate, according to the Orthodox hagiography, Mark did venture further into Africa, and preached the Gospel in Libya before returning to his adoptive home in Alexandria. He happened to see a cobbler named Ananias, pierce one of the fingers of his hand with an awl and exclaim, ‘O the One God!’ Saint Mark healed the cobbler’s finger, and taught Ananias about Christ the living God, to whom Ananias had called out in his pain. Ananias welcomed Mark as a guest in his home, and he and his whole household were baptised in the name of the Triune God by the Holy Apostle. His home thereafter became a house-church and Ananias himself joined Mark in converting the Alexandrians to the Faith.

For seven years, Saint Mark and Ananias worked tirelessly in Alexandria. Saint Mark appointed three priests – Malchos, Sabinos and Kerbinos – and seven deacons to help Ananias, the converted became so many. All the while, he preached against the pagan gods of the city, and aroused anger against him among the wealthy Greeks and Romans who worshipped them. In that year the Pascha fell on the feast of Serapis, the main tutelary god of the Greeks in Alexandria. As Saint Mark and Ananias were celebrating the Pascha, a mob of pagan Greeks attacked the church and captured Mark, beating him, binding him about with a rope, dragging him through the streets and finally throwing him into prison. While in prison, our Lord Jesus Christ came to Mark in a vision and strengthened him before he was to suffer martyrdom. The following day the angry mob bore Mark out of his cell – but on his way there his bodily strength faltered. He cried out: ‘Into Your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,’ and died before he could be brought to trial.

The pagans wanted to have his body burnt and his ashes scattered in ignominy. But as they lit the fire, the skies darkened, thunder crashed and the ground split open. The pagans fled in terror. The followers of Christ, led by Ananias, took up Saint Mark’s holy relics and buried them in a stone vault, over which two and a half centuries later a church was built. The relics were translated to Venice in 820, after the Muslim conquests, for safekeeping.

I am of course utterly devoted to Holy Apostle Matthew, my namesake and patron saint. With Saint Matthew I share not only a name, a certain kinship and a general love of genealogy, but also a certain love for Persia and sub-Saharan Africa. But there is still very much a soft spot in my heart for Mark and his Gospel as well – largely on account of Ched Myers and his socio-literary reading of the Gospel of Mark. Saint Mark’s Gospel emphasises Christ’s works of healing and exorcism, preaching and teaching in an unabashedly-political context where their subversive and prophetic subtext would be clear to either a Roman or a Palestinian audience. It is therefore rightly called by Myers a ‘manifesto for radical discipleship’.

The populist potentials of the Gospel are thoroughly understood and appreciated by Myers – populist, that is, not in a nationalistic sense, but in an œconomic one. The debt and purity codes of the Second Temple religion are cancelled or inverted in such a way that allows even the worst-off members of the society to participate, through the alternative community proclaimed in the ekklesia, in political and œconomic life. Myers unfortunately succumbs a bit to a certain Protestantising sensibility, possibly implicit in his project itself, concerned as it is with the original sensibility and context of the author. But the case he presents is substantial and worthy of careful study even by Catholic and Orthodox readers.

Ironically, the case is better made from a radical position, that it would be wrong to understand the empty tomb as merely symbolic or metaphorical. The empty tomb is not a ‘symbol’: it is the punchline. The entire project of Mark’s εὐαγγέλιον as a satirical-subversive ‘news of an Imperial victory’ is predicated on the actual defeat of death by Christ. If the victory over death proclaimed by Christ’s flesh-and-blood Resurrection were not really real, there would be no such ‘good news’. Death would have the final word. There would be no overturn of the logic of Empire, and there would be no point in any radical call to renewed discipleship. This is one of several reasons why the political witness of the mainline churches tends to be so limp-wristed and focussed on gratification. One could even potentially make the case that American empire and its mouthpieces are so invested in such moralistic therapeutic deisms and ‘symbolic’ interpretations of Christ’s death, precisely because such theologies take the edge off of any sort of radical resistance to it.

Myers would have us observe that the empty tomb which greets us at the end of the Gospel is in fact a call for us to return to the beginning, to return to Galilee where the first disciples were called. Mark is calling us, in effect, to pick up again the spiritual work – both the inward work of prayer, fasting and almsgiving; and the outward work of radical political witness and service to neighbour – that was abandoned by the disciples (one of whom denied, one of whom betrayed, but all of whom fled) on the original Great and Holy Thursday after the Last Supper. Ched Myers is emphatic that those of us in the West – those of us even in the middle and lower œconomic strata who are nevertheless seated amidst the affluence of capitalist and imperial plunder and the propaganda, whether ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’, of imperial vainglory – need to ‘read’ ourselves in the Gospel narrative in the literary persons of the rich young man and the scribe who came to question Jesus about the law. But the manifesto, the call to discipleship, affects us as well. The hymns of the Church assure us we are no better off, spiritually speaking, than the disciples in today’s Gospel readings: Peter (who denied Christ), Judas (who betrayed Christ) or Mark (who fled from Christ at His arrest). But we are called all the same to witness the risen Christ and return to Galilee to begin the work again.

Holy, glorious and all-laudable Apostle and Evangelist Mark, witness among the philosophers and the workers of Alexandria, caller of all to discipleship, intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Of thy mystical supper, O Son of God,
Accept me today as a communicant.
For I will not speak of thy mystery to thine enemies,
Neither will I give thee a kiss as did Judas,
But like the thief will I confess Thee,
Remember me, O Lord, in thy kingdom.

From your childhood the light of truth enlightened you, O Mark,
And you loved the labour of Christ the Saviour.
Therefore, you followed Peter with zeal
And served Paul well as a fellow labourer,
And you enlighten the world with your holy Gospel!

Icon of the Mystical Supper

Holy Apostle Aristobulus of the Seventy, Bishop of Britain

Saint Aristobulus of the Seventy

The sixteenth of March is the feast day in the Orthodox Church of Saint Aristobulus, a Cypriot Second Temple Jew who was the brother of Saint Yousef bar-Nehmâ. Both men were among the Seventy Apostles mentioned in the Gospel of Saint Luke. Saint Aristobulus would also, by this tradition, have been the uncle of Saint Mark the Evangelist. He was a diligent servant to the Apostles Paul and Andrew, and continued their work of spreading the good news of Christ to the remotest parts of the world. He is mentioned in the Coptic martyrologies as having preached in a city called Abratabias – which may or may not have been in Britain.

Aristobulus [also Arwystli Hen in Welsh] is mentioned by name in Saint Paul’s epistle to the Romans, as the head of a certain household. We may infer from this that he was married; some sources identify his wife as Salome, one of the Myrrh-Bearing Women, and the Welsh tradition names a son he brought with him to Britain, named Manaw. He went at Saint Paul’s urgings to the Roman province of Britain to spread the Gospel there, as attested by Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos of Constantinople and Abba Dorotheos of Gaza. He preached in the Isles of Scilly and in Cornwall. These areas of Britain were inhabited, so the Greek Martyrologies tell us, by a ‘very warlike and fierce race’, and Saint Aristobulus suffered much tribulation among them. He was beaten, taken as a criminal and dragged in chains through the streets, mocked and scourged. But, strengthened by Christ, he bore all with grace, and soon even the mockers were stilled.

Certain traditions hold that he reached Glastonbury and may have briefly settled there. There is still a parish in Wales called Bro Arwystli which appears to be named for Saint Aristobulus. This parish is located in Powys, near the headwaters of the Severn. Archpriest Andrew Phillips of Orthodox England tells us that a pious tradition in Wales names this as the place of his martyrdom. Holy father Aristobulus, faithful apostle and first bishop in Britain, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Holy Apostles of the Seventy:
Stachys, Amplias, Urban, Narcissus, Apelles, and Aristobulus,
Entreat the merciful God
To grant our souls forgiveness of transgressions.