You will recognize the connection between our readings
today if I just set before you a short passage from all three.
In the first reading from the book of the prophet Job you
heard:
The Lord said, 'Thus far shall
you come, and no farther, here shall your proud waves be stilled!'
Just as the Lord of all creation controls earth’s oceans,
in like manner did Jesus calm the troubled waters of the Sea of Galilee:
Jesus awoke and rebuked the
wind, and said to the sea, "Peace, be still!" And the wind ceased and
there was a great calm.
Moreover, He calmed
not only the tumultuous waters but also the hearts and minds of His anxious
disciples, as exemplified by St. Paul in the second reading:
The love of Christ impels us,
so that (we) might live no longer for ourselves but for Him Who died for our
sake.
Or again in a more famous passage from his letter to the
Romans (8:38-39):
For I am sure that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be
able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Peace rests on power; and, complementing the calmness of
the Lord sleeping in the stern of the storm-tossed boat, was His divine power
whereby, on waking, He instantly stilled the raging waters.
Now, these Galileans, His first disciples, would need,
later on in their Apostolate, to have the calm strength of an unshakeable faith
to which those later words of St. Paul bear witness. For, just as only the omnipotent
power of the Lord of all creation could calm the primeval surge of earth’s
oceans, so too, only self-committing faith in, and self-forgetful love for, Jesus, as the Lord and
Saviour of mankind in Whom:
The whole
fullness of deity dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9),
can confer that sublime strength which brings true peace
and abiding joy to the human soul despite all the tribulations of life in a
world which is under the power of Satan and the repeated attacks of his fallen angels.
In the Gospel story the disciples were as yet immature in
their faith, and the situation in which they found themselves was very serious,
indeed, it was life-threatening:
A great windstorm arose, and
waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion.
They woke Him and said to Him: Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?
Now the ocean was, for the Israelites and the neighbouring
civilizations, the realm of Chaos. As we
read in the story of creation from the book of Genesis, before God created
either the heavens or the earth:
Darkness was over the face of
the deep (Gen 1:2);
and the greatest threat to man and to the world was that
they should slip back again into chaos, be overwhelmed by those dark waters. And, indeed, did not their own history tell
them that it was through wind and overpowering waters that the Lord had overturned
the chariots and horses, and drowned the troops, of the pursuing Pharaoh when
Israel was being led safely out of Egypt (Exodus 15:8-10):
With the blast of Your
nostrils the waters piled up; the floods stood up in a pile; the deeps
congealed in the heart of the sea. The
enemy said, 'I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my hand
shall destroy them.' You blew with Your
wind; the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
As Israel became less and less faithful to her covenant
with the Lord, she was repeatedly punished for her many failings; and these
troubles and trials, this punishment and pain, was pictured by the psalmist as
the looming threat of chaos (Psalm 124: 2-5):
If it had not been the LORD
who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have
swallowed us up alive when their anger was kindled against us; then would the flood
would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us
would have gone the raging waters.
Those traditional memories and fears were deliberately used
by Our Lord to teach the Apostles what sort of faith they should have in
Him. For the psalm I have just quoted
where the great fear was that the swollen waters would overwhelm them ends as
follows:
Blessed be the LORD, Who has
not given us as prey to their teeth. We
have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken,
and we have escaped.
The wind over the waters causing the storm had been of Our
Lord’s choosing for it was He Who had suggested that they should cross over the
sea to the other side, He had chosen the
circumstances that would test His disciples; and, as throughout the history of
Israel, God’s punishments and testing had never been for their ruin but for
their education and betterment, similarly here, Jesus was testing His disciples
in order to strengthen and confirm them.
If they would respond with trust in the Lord as the psalmist had done,
great would be their reward; but even their failure could nevertheless serve as
a lesson that would bring enduring blessings if they would learn from it.
The disciples’ reaction to their situation was perfectly
natural and normal, and all those who have ever been in a small rowing boat on
stormy waters will appreciate their alarm.
They were found wanting not because they had been afraid of the imminent
threat that their boat might capsize but because they cried out to the Lord without due confidence
and trust, so that their words were little better than cries of
panic. Jesus therefore:
Woke up, rebuked the wind,
and said to the sea, "Quiet! Be still!" The wind ceased and there was a great calm. Then He asked them, "Why are you
terrified? Do you not yet have faith?"
Time was short for Jesus; soon He would have to give the
supreme example of confidence and trust under the pressure of mortal torment
and soul-destroying abandonment saying:
Father,
into Your hands I commend my Spirit.
The time was coming too when these disciples so close to His
Heart would have to follow where their Lord had gone, and therefore it was
imperative that they should start to learn the lesson that would prepare them to
overcome the world with Him.
This is in accordance with what St. Paul had in mind when,
in our second reading, he wrote to the Corinthians:
If anyone is in Christ, he is
a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Dear People of God, Jesus wills to be our strength and our
peace, that strength and peace which alone can enable us to find the true joy
of life; and for that to happen we have to turn to Him in all our needs and
with all our aspirations and hopes.
However, we must be found using not merely conventional words nor
adopting non-committal, provisional,
attitudes, but with deep personal sincerity and self-commitment based on divine
promises not human expectations:
For the love of Christ controls
us; He died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves,
but for Him who, for their sake, died and was raised.
We must try to live no longer for ourselves, following our
own ideas, seeking our own satisfactions, trusting and serving number one; we
must endeavour, more and more, to put Jesus first in our lives: trusting and
hoping in Him, following and serving Him in all that we try to do (Psalm 27:14):
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
