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Saint Mark: Difference between revisions
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The saint was thus dragged the whole day, staining the stones with his blood, and leaving the ground strewed with pieces of his flesh; all the while he ceased not to praise and thank God for his sufferings. At night he was thrown into prison, in which God comforted him by two visions.... The next day the infidels dragged him, as before, till he happily expired on the twenty-fifth of April. The Christians gathered up the remains of his mangled body, and buried them at Bucoles, where they afterward usually assembled for prayer.<ref>Alban Butler, ''Lives of the Saints'' (Burns and Oates, 1899), 4:317.</ref> | The saint was thus dragged the whole day, staining the stones with his blood, and leaving the ground strewed with pieces of his flesh; all the while he ceased not to praise and thank God for his sufferings. At night he was thrown into prison, in which God comforted him by two visions.... The next day the infidels dragged him, as before, till he happily expired on the twenty-fifth of April. The Christians gathered up the remains of his mangled body, and buried them at Bucoles, where they afterward usually assembled for prayer.<ref>Alban Butler, ''Lives of the Saints'' (Burns and Oates, 1899), 4:317.</ref> | ||
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As we remember the lion of Saint Mark and as we study his book, let us learn to thank God and praise him for sufferings less than these. Let us pray that we will be able to bear all things in the true spirit of Christ, as the saints and the martyrs have always done. We need to praise and thank God for his testings of our soul immediately—right when they happen. It needs to be a habit. And it’s a habit of Leo, the lion, God-gratitude of the heart, gratefulness that we are tried and strengthened. | |||
God has to strengthen us. He cannot leave us in a state where everything is done for us, everything works out perfectly. We’ll be flabby, we don’t have any muscles, we won’t have any drive to figure out solutions to the challenges of life. God has to leave us in difficult situations so we can be strengthened, so when he wants to give us a mantle from Sirius or from Morya, he knows that we will have the inner strength to be the coordinate for that mantle. | |||
== The Gospel of Mark == | == The Gospel of Mark == | ||