On Bright Friday—the Friday of the first week after Easter—the Orthodox Church honours the Feast of the Life-Giving Spring, dedicated to the Holy Mother of God. The feast was established so that the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the incarnate Son of God—the resurrected Savior of the world—would not remain uncelebrated during the Paschal days.
The name of the feast is an old Bulgarian translation of its Greek title and is connected to a healing spring located in a forest near the walls of Constantinople. Today, this area is part of an extensive cemetery complex, predominantly Muslim, but around the spring itself—known as the Life-Giving Spring—there is a Christian cemetery. The spring lies about two metres below the surface and is home to small golden fish. For centuries, the place and its surroundings have been called Balıklı in Turkish, meaning “the place of fish.”
There are two ancient legends regarding the origin of this sacred site, dating back to the 5th or 6th century, during the reigns of different emperors. The more well-known story involves Leo I the Thracian, who, before becoming emperor, was still a soldier traveling to Constantinople. In a forest near the city walls, he encountered a blind man who asked him for water. At that moment, a voice guided him to the spring. After drinking from the water and washing his eyes, the blind man regained his sight and prophesied that the soldier would become emperor and build a church by the spring. Thus began the veneration of the Holy Mother of God at that site—a devotion that eventually spread throughout the entire Orthodox world.
On this same day, the Church also commemorates Saint Mark the Apostle and Evangelist, one of the four Evangelists who recorded the life and works of Jesus Christ. He was also one of the seventy apostles who spread Christ’s teachings and left behind a written account of what he preached.
Born a Jew, he was originally named John, but also carried the Roman name Mark, as was customary at the time. He is believed to be the young man who, when Jesus Christ was seized and taken to the high priest, followed the crowd wrapped in a linen cloth. This detail is mentioned only in the Gospel of Mark, and without naming the individual—an example of the modesty of ancient authors who avoided naming themselves. It is likely that Mark was asleep when news of Jesus' arrest reached his home, and he quickly wrapped himself in a cloth and ran out to see what was happening. And when the soldiers tried to capture him, he broke free and ran away naked.
The Acts of the Apostles mentions that Mark and his mother Mary offered shelter to Jesus in their home in Jerusalem. According to ancient Church tradition, it was in this house that Jesus held the Last Supper with His disciples, appeared to the apostles after His resurrection, and where the apostles later gathered when the Holy Spirit descended upon them on Pentecost. Later, John or Mark accompanied the apostles Paul and Barnabas—the latter being his uncle—on their missionary journey to Cyprus. However, he withdrew from continuing with them into Asia Minor, which led Paul to decline his company on the next journey. Mark then became an assistant to the Apostle Peter, with whom he traveled to Rome. There, in the mid-first century, Mark wrote his Gospel, addressing non-Jewish readers, as evidenced by his explanations of Hebrew terms and locations in Palestine, as well as his use of Latin words more than the other Evangelists.
Later, Saint Mark preached in Egypt, where he achieved great success but was eventually persecuted for it and died a martyr’s death.
Source: BTA
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