Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633)
(12th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on June 21, 2015 at St. Aidan's Church in Cumberland, R.I. and Mary, Mother of Mankind Church in North Providence, R.I.; See Mark 4:35-41)
In the Catholic vision of things, the world around us matters.
Everything and everyone around us has profound meaning and purpose. First and foremost, relationships and people matter.
But more than that, even the world we live in, nature and the environment,
these things all matter in the deepest and most significant way. Just this past week our Holy Father, Pope
Francis, issued his new encyclical letter, Laudato
Si, addressing specifically our responsibility to care for nature and the
environment. Referring to the words of
the beloved St. Francis of Assisi, in his 13th century Italian poem, the Canticle
of the Creatures, our Holy Father sings:
“Laudato si,
Signore, per sora nostra matre terra,
la quale ne sustenta et
governa, et produce
diversi fructi con coloriti
flori et herba.”
Praise
be to you, my Lord, through our Sister,
Mother Earth,
Mother Earth,
who
sustains and governs us, and who produces
various
fruit with colored flowers and herbs.
The way that we care for the people in our lives and the way
we relate to the created world around us is, in fact, reflective of our
relationship with God. To look at it
from another perspective, in the words of the great poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:
“The
world is charged with the grandeur of God.” We cannot truly relate to God on a deeply
spiritual level if we are not attentive to His presence in persons around us
and in the natural world. We, likewise,
express our love and affection for God by the way we treat the people and even the things around us. With great
appreciation for the material world God gave us, we can use these very things
to bless and render thanksgiving to Him.
One of the most breathtaking and poignant examples of that expression
is found in the way churches were constructed in the great cities of the world like
Paris, Rome, Brussels and Cologne in the Middle Ages. These magnificent basilicas and great gothic cathedrals were not made to be merely practical. They were made from basic elements of wood
and stone in order to express the glory and the grandeur of God.
The structure of these great churches, without exception, was
cruciform; they were all fashioned in the shape of the cross. The two side transepts formed the shorter
cross beam, while the longer dimensions of the church consisted of the apse
where the altar was located and the sacrifice of the Mass took place, and the
central isle which is called the nave.
Aerial view of Cologne Cathedral
That word, nave, is taken from the Latin word navis, which means, “ship.” If you look at the long, narrow ceiling of the breathtaking Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the vaulted ceiling comes together in a point, and the ribs along that ceiling make it look like the hull or the belly of an upside down ship.
That word, nave, is taken from the Latin word navis, which means, “ship.” If you look at the long, narrow ceiling of the breathtaking Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the vaulted ceiling comes together in a point, and the ribs along that ceiling make it look like the hull or the belly of an upside down ship.
The message being communicated is that the faithful enter
into the mystery of the cross when they come to worship God; they enter deeply
into the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ. When they do so, they are also entering into
the ship where Christ is the Captain and they are being kept safe from the chaos
and the storms that could destroy their souls; they are being led to the safety
of the harbor of eternal life with God.
There is a beautiful expression of that mystery in the
Gospel this weekend. St. Mark tells us
that Christ took the initiative and said to His disciples, “Let us cross to the other side” (Mark
4:35). It is always Christ who takes the initiative
in our spiritual lives, and He is constantly challenging us to leave behind the
danger of the secular world, those tendencies that ruin Christian life and draw
us away from Him. The natural world is good and beautiful, as
Pope Francis reminds us in Laudato Si,
but secularization and a world without God will leave us empty and without joy;
if we stay immersed in the secular world long enough we risk losing our souls. “Let
us cross to the other side,” (Mark 4:35),
Jesus implores us. There are three timely
lessons that the Disciples of Christ teach us this weekend in answer to that
great invitation.
Firstly we discover that Jesus, who takes the initiative and
greatly desires that we make this journey to eternal life with Him, nonetheless
always honors our freedom. St. Mark
tells us, “Leaving the crowd, they took
Jesus with them in the boat, just as he was” (Mark 4:36). Jesus will
never force Himself into the boat with us.
He takes the initiative in that loving encounter of faith, but He always
waits for us to make the decision of whether or not we will receive Him intimately
into our lives. It is completely up to
us if we want Him in the boat; if we want him in our lives; in our families; in
our workplace; in our personal relationships.
Perhaps you have never really taken a moment to actually do
that; it’s possible that you may have never actually knelt down in a Church
like this one or in the privacy of your own home, and said, “Jesus, I want you in my life; I welcome you
into my family, into my home, into my struggles and into all my hopes and
dreams. I want you to be an integral and
intimate part of my life.” If we
have never had the chance to actually do that, there is no better time than
right now.
Which brings me to the second important lesson that the
disciples teach us this morning. When we
invite Christ into our lives and welcome Him into the boat with us, out of
necessity we must also maintain a dialogue and a conversation with Him. After all, it can be really awkward to be in a boat, in close quarters with another
person, and never actually speak with them!
When we welcome Him into our lives we also have to speak to Him, maybe
even complain to Him, thank Him, and share with Him our deepest secrets; in
turn, we also have to be willing to listen to Him, listen to what He has to say
to us as we accompany Him on that journey “to
the other side.” In the Christian tradition, obviously, that dialogue
and conversation is called prayer.
There is a prayer,
by the way, in our Gospel this weekend.
Unfortunately, it is not a very good one. St. Mark tells us that after the disciples responded
to Christ’s initiative and welcomed Him into the boat, suddenly a great storm
rose up on the sea and they were in mortal danger. The winds were threatening to capsize their
vessel. Water was coming up over the
bow. They were terrified, and they began
to pray: “Do you not care that we are
perishing?” (Mark 4: 38).
Wow. That is not a
very good prayer, is it? But before we
judge these disciples, if we are honest, we can admit that we have perhaps all
prayed like that before. Lord, do you not care that my marriage is
failing; that my friendships are floundering; that my work is flagging; that my
personal life is in a shambles. Do you
not even care? . . .
And if we have prayed like that before, then we know that
the answer usually comes before we even finish the prayer: Of course He cares! Could God suffer and die on the cross for us,
but then not really care about the troubles and the difficulties that we are
facing? Is that even possible? Of
course not! When the disciples
finally wake Him up, Jesus responds immediately:
He woke up, rebuked
the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!” The wind ceased and there was great calm.
—Mark 4: 39
Jesus Christ most certainly cares about the dangers and the
difficulties that we face. But the
question we need to ask this morning is not, “Does Jesus care?” It is, instead, “What. On. Earth. took the disciples so
long to wake Him up in the first place?!”
It is not the case that Jesus is asleep in their lives, nor is He asleep
in ours. We are the ones who are often
asleep in the spiritual life while the doors to prayer are wide open and Jesus Christ
is waiting to hear from us. Those disciples could have woken Him up and
said, “Lord, there are some storm clouds
out over the horizon and we are a little anxious right now.” They could have woken Him even when things
were calm and said, “Lord, what a
beautiful sunset; we are grateful to be here with you.” God is inviting us, every day, into that
intimate and life-giving dialogue with Him.
Are we answering that invitation and growing in our personal lives of prayer?
The final lesson the disciples teach us this weekend is
actually the foundation for the other two, and it has to do with the question
Jesus asks them at the end of that remarkable Gospel passage. After he calms the storm on the sea, and
there is great peace, He turns to those disciples and asks, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” (Mark
4:40). In other words, He is the
Son of God; they have watched Him heal the sick and cast out demons. He has command over the land and the sea and over
all created things. Have they not yet
come to believe that God is here among them?
Do they not yet have faith?
There are two essential things that the Church teaches us
about faith. First and foremost, faith
is a gift. It is not the case
that some people simply have it and some people do not. Faith is not like golf or gardening: some
people are good at it and some people are not.
No, faith is a gift given to us by God, so if you want faith in your
life…ASK FOR IT! God gives generously
and freely, and one of the many things He is always willing to give us is
faith. But faith is also a response on
our part. We respond to God’s gift by
ordering our lives according to the revelation of God and the by accepting
Jesus Christ into our personal lives and living our lives, ultimately, for
Him. When we do that, there is no limit
to what God is able to accomplish in and through us.
Which brings me back to the original point of this homily: Everything in this life matters.
Our Christian faith matters, for us and for the world around
us. God is calling each one of us to be
transformed in faith and to be instruments of transformation in the world
around us.
Are we willing to welcome Him into our lives, to bring Him into the
boat with us this week?
Do we long to enter ever more deeply into that intimate conversation
with God called prayer, bringing our lives into conformity with His will and
listening attentively to His voice crying out to us in the silence?
And are we willing to respond in faith to the gift that God offers us
in this life of discipleship and love?
May we experience in our personal lives, in our families and
in our Church that faith which guides us all through life, with Jesus Christ as
our Captain, and may we one day enter into that safe harbor of eternal life
with God.
