Friday, July 21: “Rational Departure”
Acts 13: 13: “Paul and his companions put out to sea from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia; but John left them and returned to Jerusalem.”
We do not know what reason John Mark had for abandoning his post in the missionary team of Paul and Barnabas. Perhaps he got seasick. Perhaps he got homesick for his mother, a prominent figure in the early Church (Acts 12: 12), or maybe he missed the big city of Jerusalem. Whatever the case, it must have seemed the rational thing to do at the time; however, giving in to reason put him into a position where it took years to regain the apostles’ trust. But eventually he did, a fact to which the Gospel of St. Mark is there to attest.
