Our celebration of saints' feast-day calls our attention to the great things which God has done in their lives through the grace which Jesus won for us on the cross and in his resurrection.

When the saint whose feast we celebrate is an Evangelist, as today we celebrate St Mark, we are reminded in a particular way of the great gift of the four Gospels. We remember, too, that we do not know Jesus, his life and his teaching directly but, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, only through the work of the four evangelists. Each Evangelist presents us with a unique portrait of Jesus. There is only one Jesus, of course, but we can speak of the Matthaean Jesus, the Markan Jesus, the Lucan Jesus and the Johannine Jesus, and be grateful that, for meditation and contemplation and for a deeper inspiration for our spiritual lives, we have four such portraits. Praying with the different Gospels, we attain to a personal portrait of Jesus and so come to a personal and sanctifying relationship with him.