According to tradition, St Mark the Evangelist, writer of the second Gospel, could be a John Mark, perhaps a cousin of Barnabas. We observe his feast on April 25. Hippolytus of Rome (d 235) thought he was one of the 70 disciples sent out by the Lord to preach, and was later one of the many who fell away from the Lord after hearing His hard teaching in John 6 about eating His flesh and blood. Mark later returned to the faith through the ministry of Peter and became a kind of personal secretary to the Apostle, recording his sermons and eventually writing a Gospel before becoming Bishop of Alexandria around AD 49. Coptic Christians trace elements of their liturgy back to Mark himself. In Christian art, Mark and his Gospel are traditionally symbolised as a lion, one of the “four living creatures”, with the ox, eagle and man, in the Book of Revelation. Mark was slain as a martyr in AD 68 (a bad year in more than one century, it seems). Speaking of falling away, don’t we all know Catholics who have slipped away from the practice of the faith? Sometimes we can have difficulties about certain Church teachings or laws, but moments of difficulty, even many, don’t present insuperable obstacles to our fidelity and Catholic identity. Blessed John Henry Newman said: “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.” Difficulties prompt us to delve deeper, whereas doubts lead us astray. A person with difficulties wonders how something can be and, at the same time, says: “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief.” That’s from Mark’s Gospel (9:24). If Mark really did fall away from the Lord, that verse might echo personal experience. Was it Peter’s secretary who preserved the Apostle’s approach to people with difficulties? “Sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, being ready always to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). In this season before the Ascension of the Lord, Catholics took their faith into the streets and fields in processions with the singing of litanies and public petitions to God. What a marvellous way to shore up our own faith and inspire others by example to embrace their Catholic identity. Even if you don’t go into the street literally, you should still always be ready to aid a person who is struggling or has fallen away.