St. Mark of Athens

“Alas, today there are Christians in name only, but not in deeds”

By Robert Wiesner

There exists a wide variety of particular expressions of monasticism, almost all of which arose in Eastern Christianity. One of the very earliest monks was St. Mark of Athens, one of the most obscure of all the pioneering Desert Fathers. In fact, all we know of him comes from a rather obscure tale of him told by Saint Serapion, another very early monk, who seems to have been led to Saint Mark by miraculous means.

St. Serapion received a calling from God to make a journey into areas of the desert with which he was totally unfamiliar. To his knowledge, there was no one at all living in this region; it was arid, waterless, and even the wild animals avoided the district. Nevertheless, Serapion set out on his journey. He came to a mountain called Trache in the wilds of Libya, though some maintain that Trache is in Ethiopia. Much to Serapion’s astonishment, he came upon an elderly monk, Mark, living there in complete isolation. To Serapion, then, Mark confided his story.

Mark was born in Athens of a prominent family and received an excellent education in philosophy in preparation for an illustrious career. Then his parents died at about the same time that Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire. Mark was convinced legalization was a death blow to Christianity; without persecution, he thought, the Faith could not survive.

So, he determined to withdraw from the world to live his faith as he saw fit. After giving away his inheritance to the poor, he journeyed across the sea to Libya, where he took up his abode in the least desirable environment he could find.

For 95 years he lived alone, seeing not only no fellow human being, but also no animals, or even birds. He ate the sparse desert plants he found; often enough he was reduced even to the point of eating dirt. Sea water served as his drink. After thirty years spent in this fashion, God saw fit to give him a daily portion of fish, bread and water.

All this time, he was tormented by demonic attacks, the devils tormenting him by promising him a hideous death for intruding upon what they saw as their territory.  But Mark persevered in his difficult life in prayer and praise of God, utterly alone until the advent of Saint Serapion.

The very first thing Mark asked his visitor was, “Are there any Christians in the world now who, if they were to say to this mountain, ‘Arise from here and cast yourself into the sea,’ it would be so?”

Just then the very mountain, called Trache, moved toward the sea.  Mark raised his hand, saying “I did not order you to move from your place, but was conversing with a brother. Go back to your place!”

At that, the mountain settled back into its own space. Serapion was fearfully taken aback by this display of Mark’s spiritual power; Mark took him by the hand asking, “Have you never seen such miracles in your lifetime?”

“No, father!” replied Serapion.

Mark wept and stated “Alas, today there are Christians in name only, but not in deeds.”

The very next day, the 130-year-old St. Mark reposed in the Lord; Serapion later recounted how he saw St. Mark’s soul conveyed to heaven by angels.

St. Mark of Athens may well have been the very first example of a class of monks called the “grazers,” who relied upon whatever the earth provided for their sustenance. But most grazers lived in Syria, where the desert was a bit more sustaining than Mark’s absolutely inhospitable environs!