Tuesday, April 25, 2006

St. Mark the Evangelist

Today is the feast day of St. Mark the Evangelist and Apostle. He is the patron saint of my parish and its school.

Some facts about St. Mark:

  • He is one of the four Gospel authors

  • He could have been the unnamed young man present at Jesus' arrest (Mk 14:51-52)

  • He was the son of a Christian woman in Jerusalem named Mary

  • He had a miraculous escape from prison

  • He was the cousin of St. Barnabas

  • He had a falling out with St. Paul (later reconciled when he visited St. Paul in prison)

  • Mark's gospel was probably written in Rome around 60 AD

Source

I think one of our challenges as Catholics is to be more like St. Mark. To be an evangelist not only in word, but in action. We Catholics aren't comfortable with spreading the Word. We are very comfortable going to Mass, confession, and praying privately. Jesus challenges us, like he did the Apostles after His resurrection, to go out into the world and spread the Good News. Many of the early Christians left and lost their earthly lives to gain eternal life. The least we could do is be evangelists in the way we live ours.

For more on St. Mark, you can find Lessons from St. Mark here.

Share |

at 8:21 AM

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Darren:
I think the reason a lot of people hesitate to be true evangelists is that they are limited in their scope. For example, I am usually in the presence of Catholic and Christian folks. It's not like I can stand in front of Walmart and preach the gospel, or do mission work in my spare time. However, as you say, by our example we can and DO send out messages about our own faith and perhaps that is as much of a "messenger of God" we can ever hope for.

April 26, 2006 2:19 PM
Matthew said...

Thank you for this, Darren. I forgot to post on St. Mark's feastday so I copied your list of facts on him and added to it a post at my blog.

God Bless and thanks for the reminder.

April 27, 2006 9:03 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)