The Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist
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Franciscan Media
Spirituality to renew your soul
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Most of what we know about Mark comes directly from the New Testament. He is usually identified with the Mark of Acts 12:12. When Saint Peter escaped from prison, he went to the home of Mark’s mother.
Paul and Barnabas took him along on the first missionary journey, but for some reason Mark returned alone to Jerusalem. It is evident, from Paul’s refusal to let Mark accompany him on the second journey despite Barnabas’s insistence, that Mark had displeased Paul. Because Paul later asks Mark to visit him in prison, we may assume the trouble did not last long.
The oldest and the shortest of the four Gospels, the Gospel of Mark emphasizes Jesus’s rejection by humanity while being God’s triumphant envoy. Probably written for gentile converts in Rome—after the death of Peter and Paul sometime between A.D. 60 and 70—Mark’s Gospel is the gradual manifestation of a “scandal”: a crucified Messiah.
Evidently a friend of Mark—calling him “my son”—Peter is only one of this Gospel’s sources, others being the Church in Jerusalem (Jewish roots), and the Church at Antioch (largely Gentile).
Like another Gospel writer Luke, Mark was not one of the 12 apostles. We cannot be certain whether he knew Jesus personally. Some scholars feel that the evangelist is speaking of himself when describing the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane: “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” (Mark 14:51-52).
Others hold Mark to be the first bishop of Alexandria, Egypt. Venice, famous for the Piazza San Marco, claims Mark as its patron saint; the large basilica there is believed to contain his remains.
A winged lion is Mark’s symbol. The lion derives from Mark’s description of John the Baptist as a “voice of one crying out in the desert” (Mark 1:3), which artists compared to a roaring lion. The wings come from the application of Ezekiel’s vision of four winged creatures to the evangelists.
(2 Minute Read)
“Jesus appeared to the Eleven and said to them: 'Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.'
Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.”
– Mk 16:15-20
The connection between Passover and the Eucharist
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Catholic Bytes
Short, dynamic catechesis for people on the move
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CAST
Most Catholics understand that there is some connection between the Eucharist and Jewish Passover, but how deep do those connections go? In this episode, Fr. George and Fr. Conrad revisit Exodus and the story of the first Passover while they draw the connections to how we celebrate and interact with the Eucharist today.
(13 Minute Listen)
Seven Proofs for the Natural Immortality of the Human Soul
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Tim Staples
Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers
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...Dr. Flew was certainly not alone in his struggle with the concept of the natural immortality of the human soul. (I say “natural” because human beings uniquely possess an immortal soul by nature. That means, man does not need grace in order for his soul to live forever. It would do so naturally, even if he ends up in the isolation and emptiness of hell forever.) This is a point of difficulty for many skeptics. Thus, it is crucial for Christians to know how to explain it to skeptics. And to know that we don’t need a Bible to be able to do so.
The Bible certainly more than helps those who believe in its inspiration, and in the Church that has the authority to definitively interpret it. Through these great gifts, all can know the essential truths of the Faith, including the natural immortality of the human soul, both easily and infallibly. But this hardly helps when you are speaking to someone who doesn’t accept the Bible as God’s word.
The truth is, we can can demonstrate this truth through reason alone, i.e., through philosophy. But first we need to establish the fact that humans have souls at all, and define our terms...
A.M.D.G.