ST. MARK THE EVANGELIST, April 25th

Collect

ALMIGHTY GOD, who hast instructed thy holy Church with the heavenly doctrine of thy Evangelist Saint Mark : give us grace, that being not like children carried away with every blast of vain doctrine, we may be established in the truth of thy holy Gospel. Through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

For the legend

From the Treatise on Ecclesiastical Writers by St. Jerome the Priest

Liber de Scriptoribus, cap. 8

MARK, disciple and interpreter of Peter, according to what he heard from Peter's preaching, wrote a short Gospel at the request of the brethren at Rome. Which, when Peter had heard, he approved, and authorised to be read in the Church. Then taking this Gospel which he himself had written, Mark went to Egypt, where he was the first to preach Christ at Alexandria. And he founded the Church there, with such learning and austerity of life that he drew all the followers of Christ to imitate him. Then Philo, most learned of the Jews, knowing the first days of the Church in Alexandria whilst it was still under Jewish influence, wrote a book concerning its usages, as it were in praise of his own nation. And even as Luke hath related how at Jerusalem the faithful had all things in common, so Philo hath recorded what he himself saw concerning how things were done at Alexandria under the teaching of Mark. He died in the eighth year of the reign of Nero, and was buried at Alexandria, being succeeded by Anianus.

From the Anglican Breviary