Bulletin Q&A Article; Published 4-7-24:
On Palm Sunday we had the reading of the Passion from the Gospel of St. Mark. It talked about a young man running away naked. What’s up with that?
What’s up indeed? The passage referred to is: “Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked” (Mk. 14: 51-52). There are two questions. Who is the young man? And, why did Mark include this detail that is not found in the other three gospel accounts of the Passion?
I scoured many commentaries, and found much discussion, but could not come up with complete agreement or definitive answers. The most common answers to the identity of the young man are James, the apostle John, or Mark himself.
The James under consideration is not one of the two apostles named James, but is the James who is the author of the letter in the New Testament. Theophylact, one of the Church Fathers, states: “It appears probable that this young man was of that house, where they had eaten the Passover. But some say that this young man was James, the brother of our Lord, who was called Just; who after the ascension of Christ received from the Apostles the throne of the bishopric of Jerusalem.” (James was probably a cousin of Jesus, although some scholars say that St. Joseph was a widower before marrying Mary, and that James might be Jesus’ half-brother.)
One commentary reports that St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory all think that the young man was John because he was the youngest of the apostles and the only one who followed Jesus to His crucifixion. This same commentary, however, rejected this theory because Mark says previously in verse 50 that all the apostles had fled. St. Gregory wrote: “John, who, although he afterwards returned to the cross to hear the words of the Redeemer, at first was frightened and fled.”
It could have been someone who lived in the area around the Garden of Gethsemane who was asleep and was awoken by the commotion and then ran out into the night wrapped only in a bed linen. This seems to be the most probable explanation and points to Mark himself, sometimes referred to as John Mark. There are reports that Mark’s family was the owner of the Garden of Olives, and it would be very likely that Mark would have been sleeping in the area. That Mark is the young man mentioned in his gospel is the predominant view. A Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture sums it up this way: “Only Mark records this incident of the unnamed young man. He may have been roused from sleep by the crowd and followed them with a linen cloth wrapped about him. The fact that he followed our Lord in these circumstances suggests that he was a disciple or, at least, sympathetic to Christ. It is unlikely that mere curiosity explains his actions. Many writers hold that this is a personal reminiscence of the author of the Gospel and identify the young man with Mark himself. The insertion of this personal anecdote, which is not closely linked with either the preceding or the subsequent narrative, would be equivalent to the setting of Mark’s signature to the Gospel. The view is not certain, but it gives a reasonable explanation of an otherwise baffling narrative. It appears to be clear that we cannot identify the young man who figures in this incident with any of the Apostles—they had all fled.”