Yesterday was Saint Mark's Day
Festivals falling on a Sunday of Eastertide are observed on the Monday following or at the discretion of the minister on another suitable weekday in the same week.
This obviously is required when Easter Day or its octave day, the First Sunday after Easter, fall on 25th April. When it comes to the Third Sunday after Easter, however, we might begin to wonder. Why should the feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist not be celebrated on such a Sunday in Eastertide?
The very fact that Mark the Evangelist wrote his gospel, after all, is because of the Resurrection. It is the Resurrection which animates and gives meaning to his opening words, "the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God". It is because of the witness of the four Evangelists that the Church celebrates Easter Day and Eastertide.
Mark and the other Evangelists give meaning and substance to the Church's Easter faith and proclamation. To celebrate Easter is not to engage in metaphysical speculation or merely affirm a 'spiritual experience'. It is to declare, with Mark and the other Evangelists, "The third day he rose again from the dead". It is to confess that this event, of which the empty tomb is the sign, is the very heart of the Christian Faith.
Celebrating Saint Mark's Day on a Sunday of Eastertide draws us to see how Easter faith is rooted not in 'spiritual experience' or vague 'life after death' affirmations but in this particular salvific event (which then gives meaning and definition to spiritual experiences and the hope of immortality). Saint Mark's Day on a Sunday in Eastertide is therefore akin to celebrating Saint John the Evangelist's Day in Christmastide, including on a Sunday when it is 27th December (something which the Church of Ireland BCP 2004 allows). The feast of Saint John witnesses to the Incarnation as salvific event, not abstract principle:
This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true (from the Gospel reading for Saint John the Evangelist's Day, John 21:19-end).
Both feasts, then, point to the salvific events of the Incarnation and the Resurrection as doctrine, the body of teaching to which the Christian assents as saving truth. The collect for Saint John the Evangelist's Day refers to "the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John"; that for Saint Mark's Day, "the heavenly doctrine of thy Evangelist Saint Mark". In other words, the feast of Saint Mark falling on a Sunday during Eastertide reminds us that the Lord's Resurrection is doctrine, a teaching which defines the Christian Faith. The fact that the collect goes on to petition that we would not be "carried away with every blast of vain doctrine" also tell us that are other, rival doctrinal accounts which the Christian cannot accept.
It is this understanding of the Resurrection as salvific event and as doctrine - on the basis of the proclamation of Scripture - that contemporary Anglicanism requires after a generation of theological and catechetical confusion. Celebrating the feast of Mark the Evangelist during a Sunday of Eastertide offers an opportunity to restate that the Easter faith is "in accordance with the Scriptures", not based on spiritual experiences; to confess the salvific nature of particular events ("that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures: and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures"); and to declare that the event of the Lord's Resurrection is at the heart of the doctrine (the body of teaching) which defines what it is to be Christian.
These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full (from the Gospel appointed for Saint Mark's Day, John 15:1-11).
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