He got new clothes!

I’m talking about the mysterious young man mentioned in Mark’s passion account—the young man who followed Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane with nothing but a linen cloth on. The Scripture tells us that the enemies of Jesus tried to grab hold of him, but when they did all they got was the cloth! And so he ran away naked.

Who was this mysterious boy?

It was probably St. Mark himself. One theory has it that the Last Supper was held at the home of Mark’s family, and that Judas had originally taken the enemies of Jesus there, thinking that our Lord would still be eating the Passover meal with the other apostles. Young Mark, who had already gone to bed, heard the commotion when Judas and the others arrived, got up, and then followed them across the Kidron Valley into the Garden of Gethsemane. This would explain why he was there with only a bed sheet wrapped around him.

Another theory says that the Garden of Gethsemane belonged to Mark’s family, and that he was sleeping nearby in his home, until he heard the noise made by Judas and the others, at which time he decided to get up and investigate.

A typically inquisitive child!

But regardless of the particulars, the fact remains: Mark encountered the suffering Christ on Holy Thursday night, and he was stripped naked. Now he was stripped physically (we know that from the details of the story), but I would say that he was also "stripped" spiritually.

Because he ran away in fear!

Let’s face it, he was afraid that the men who came to kill Jesus were going to do something terrible to him. And so there was great symbolism in the fact that he ran off naked: his fear, you see, had been exposed.

But he didn’t stay naked, did he? He got new clothes. We know that just from looking at the tapestry hanging on the back wall of the sanctuary (the one to the right of the crucifix, with the lion symbol below it). There he is, good old Mark, very well dressed (at least very well dressed for the first century!).

But much more importantly Mark eventually came to believe in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, such that he was spiritually "clothed" with faith and fortitude! The fear that led him to run away in the garden was taken away! We know that because he wrote a document in his adult years in which he courageously proclaimed his faith to the whole world. (That document, of course, is the Gospel that bears his name.)

Will you come to Jesus Christ this Holy Week and allow him to expose some of your fears, some of your weaknesses, some of your prejudices and sinful attitudes? Jesus will do that, you know, if you really spend some quality time contemplating his suffering and death—his great acts of love FOR YOU (not just for the world as a whole, but for YOU personally!). But the good news is that Jesus never abandons us in a condition of spiritual nakedness. As he did with St. Mark, he will always give us new and better "clothes." He will clothe us with a deeper faith, with a stronger hope, with a more effective charity, and with the special graces we need individually at this particular moment of our life.