By Deacon Jerry
Franzen Cathedral June 21, 2015
Job 38:1,
8-11 2 Corinthians 5:14-17 Mark 4:35-41
I
*Why did Jesus,
who is God, and therefore all-powerful,
allow himself to fall asleep
just when things
were getting really
tough, really scary, for his followers?
Why is an
all-powerful God
not immediately present to us as we need His
assistance,
why is He not right there
with a helping hand;
that is a question that we all have to
face sooner or later.
Maybe we won't
be a on a boat during a storm
that threatens to sink us,
but each one of us will run
up against
some kind
of storm before we die.
In fact, in this
fallen world,
it is safe to say that the storm is
the norm.
It may be the long and painful sickness of a loved one,
the death of a beloved child,
damage caused by a family member's addictions or
infidelities,
the ravages of war,
a debilitating natural disaster,
financial ruin,
or maybe just intense, heart-sickening loneliness.
Why does an
all-powerful God go to sleep in our boats
and let these storms rage
against us?
The Catechism
tells us clearly that we will not understand God's ways fully
until we meet him face to face on the other side of death.
The Catechism in #324 states the following:
The fact that
God permits physical and even moral evi l
is a
mystery that God illuminates by his Son Jesus Christ
who died and rose to vanquish evil.
Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit
an evil,
if he did not cause a good to come from
that very evil,
by ways that we shall fully know only in
eternal life.
It says that we
can’t now know God’s ways fully,
but we can understand
God's ways partially,
if we understand God's agenda for
our lives.
We must
understand that God's agenda
for our brief journey her on earth is
not
perfect
comfort and unbroken pleasure.
Rather, he wants us to achieve the wisdom, courage, joy,
and inner
balance of spiritual maturity.
In other words, he wants us to get in shape for
heaven.
And that involves learning to trust in him
more than in ourselves,
learning that we are not all-powerful.
That's hard
to learn,
because it goes directly against the earthly
tendencies
we have all
inherited from original sin.
And so,
sometimes,
God goes to sleep in our boats and
lets the storm rage,
so that we will come to know and accept
the reality
of our limitations
and the truth
of our dependence on him.
II
To fully grasp
the awesome power
that Christ displays in this Gospel
scene,
we need to look a little
deeper, to use our imagination.
Few situations leave men so helpless and despairing
as storms at sea.
Although the Sea of Galilee is just a lake
it is well
known for the violence of its squalls,
which
arise and subside rapidly and unpredictably
due to its
peculiar geographical situation.
It is located at the mouth of a long funnel
created by rows of mountains to the north.
Air travels through the narrowing valley
onto the sea
with explosive force.
In the midst of these gales,
the power of
nature is unleashed in terrifying violence,
and human
fraility is nakedly exposed.
St. Mark makes
it quite clear that the disciples,
many of whom were fishermen by trade
and familiar with boats and
sea storms,
feared for their lives.
So we can safely
infer that this storm was no minor agitation.
That a mere word
from the Lord reins in nature's primeval brawn shocked the helpless fishermen even more
than the stormy sea had frightened them
just moments before.
They had seen
the Lord's miracles,
they had heard his wisdom,
they had witnessed his power
over the human heart.
But to see the
most unruly powers
that
flow through the bowels of the universe submit,
like a well-trained golden
retriever –
this was a lordship
they had not yet even conceived of;
this is the lordship of our
God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
We should be encouraged
by this reminder that our God,
our eternal Father who loves us
and is always watching over
us, is all-powerful.
And today when
we pray the Creed, let's relish those words,
praying them right from the
heart:
"We believe
in one God, the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth..."
III
But how can we apply
this beautiful and encouraging truth
to our daily lives?
St Ignatius of
Loyola, the sixteenth-century knight turned priest
who founded the Jesuits,
has a good piece of advice in
this regard.
You may have
heard this.
St. Ignatius would
say that a true Christian
should "pray as
if everything depended upon God,
but work as
if everything depended upon himself
(or herself)."
This sounds like
a contradiction, but it isn't.
When life's storms batter us, our families,
and our communities,
our first
reaction should always be the same
as
the reaction of the Apostles in today's Gospel:
to go to Jesus, to wake him
up if we think that we must,
to place our confidence in him,
through
sincere, heart-to-heart prayer.
He wants us to bring our situation to Him, put it in His
hands.
He is always ready to help.
He will hear us, because he is always
listening.
And then, having put the situation in God's hands,
the best way
to show him that we truly trust him
is to
confidently do whatever we can to help achieve
the outcome we think is best
- whatever next
step occurs to us.
A pitcher who trusts in his catcher
knows that
the catcher calls for certain pitches
in certain locations
and he
follows the catcher’s directions.
In a way, God is our catcher and
we must follow His directions.
He has chosen
to build his Kingdom in this world
through
our cooperation in doing what he calls of us.
**The playwright Arthur Miller
was married
to the movie star Marilyn Monroe
when
she was making the movie, the Misfits.
In his autobiography Arthur describes how
she had
descended into depression and despair
and
how he watched
as she became quite dependent on drugs.
One evening,
after the doctor had given her a shot and she
was asleep,
Arthur
stood hopelessly watching her.
He thought “I found myself straining to imagine miracles.
What if she were to
awake and I were able to say,
God loves
you, darling,’ and she were able to believe it!
How I wish I had my
religion back and she hers.”
It is all about our faith in God’s love for each of us.
He is not asleep, He is not disinterested in us.
Today, as God
renews his commitment to us in this Mass,
let's renew our confidence
in him,
by promising to use, with
gusto,
all of the gifts he has given to each of us.
*Content in this
homily taken from: http://www.epriest.com/homily_packs/build/135
“The Twelfth
Sunday in Ordinary Time”
** Story taken
from “A World of Stories for Preachers and Teachers” by William J. Bausch,
Twenty-Third Publications, Mystic, CT #228
p 338
