19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Sunday 13th August 2017)
Storms of life – (Matthew 14:22-33)
In this Gospel passage, Jesus is once again alone and taking time to pray and he essentially tells the disciples that He will meet them on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. So the disciples are in the boat, they are on their own and they are maybe half way across, a few miles out. Matthew tells us that it is the fourth watch, which means that it is somewhere between 3am and 6am. This is the dark part of the night. This time they are facing opposition, not from human enemies, but from nature. The wind picks up and it is against the boat. It is looking very dangerous.
In that dark part of the night, when nature is in her full fury, they see Jesus. He is not performing a trick on the water but He is coming towards them while walking on the water. Now they know that He is capable of things like that but they are still terrified because this is not something that the throngs of people benefit from as it is just the disciples who are present. This is Jesus coming to them with His presence on these waters. And remember that the waters are not calm, the storm is whipping up a chaos and it is in this chaos that Our Lord and Saviour makes Himself manifest. And the disciples are of course, as each of us would be, terrified and they cry out in fear. Immediately, Jesus does not let them to remain in anxiety. He quickly says, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid”. The “..it is I…” part is very important because when you translate that from the Greek language, it says ‘I Am’. Jesus is uttering the Divine name of ‘I Am’ that God gave to Moses. This would have caught the interest of the Jews in that boat. And Peter, speaking first, asks Jesus to allow him to come to Him if it really is Jesus. Notice how Peter uses the word ‘if’. Peter is not 100% sure if it is Jesus, but he thinks that it probably is. So he says, ‘Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you’, to which Jesus responds, ‘Come’. Peter, despite the turmoil all around him with the high winds and rocky waves, gets out of the boat and begins to walk towards Jesus. We are told that as soon as Peter steps out of the boat, he starts to notice the problems around him and begins to take his eyes off of the prize, which is Jesus. Peter begins to sink. Jesus waits for Peter to cry, ‘Lord save me’, and immediately He is there with His mighty hand to support Peter and to keep Him where he needs to be, which is with the Lord on top of the water. They get back in the boat and immediately nature calms down. Jesus, who is the Lord of everything, calms everything and everybody down and in that moment of awe, they all agree that ‘Truly, you are the Son of God’. That is a beautiful testament of faith.
We need to trust Jesus Christ in our lives. Not just in good times only but at all times. Do we trust the Lord enough to be with us when the storms and winds of our lives begin to whip up, whether it is a relative who is angry with us or a co-worker who does not understand Catholic Church teaching and so on? We have to be the presence of Jesus to them, trusting that He is the Divine Word. It is not our arguments or our cleverness that will win people over. We are agents and ambassadors of Jesus. We do not have to be perfect debate champions, we just have to be His presence. Like we see in this Gospel passage, Jesus is present in midst of the darkest time of night, and the worst form of storm. Just when you think it is at its worst and all seems lost and we cannot keep going, it is followed by an instant of calm. It is then we realise that Jesus has not just appeared magically for the first time but that He has been here all along. Lord, let us have eyes to see Your presence in dark days and bright days, everyday.