Fr. Roger J. Landry: Remember, Jesus Is Still In the Boat

The problems that often confront the Church do not flow from the fact that has been asleep, but that we have been asleep. It's not that Jesus is doing nothing, but that we've been doing so little.

The problems that often confront the Church do not flow from the fact that has been asleep, but that we have been asleep. It's not that Jesus is doing nothing, but that we've been doing so little. This Year of Faith is a time for us to reawaken from our slumber and with him start to fill the boat, the new Noah's ark, with all those people whom Jesus wants with us to disembark on at the eternal port of heaven.

P>FALL RIVER, MA (Catholic Online). St Matthew records this account of  Jesus' calming of the winds and the seas:

"As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!" He said to them, "Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?" Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. The men were amazed and said, "What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?" (Matt. 3:23- 27)

This is much more than a demonstration of the Lord's power over the forces of nature. He who with a word created the heavens and the earth, the seas and all they contain, with a word could calm them. And, as we see in the Gospel, he did.

Neither is this Gospel account a manifestation of the failure of the apostles to believe in this power of Jesus. They knew that he had the power, which is why they woke him up in the first place. They had already seen him cast out demons, cure Simon Peter's mother-in-law and others who were ill, heal lepers, forgive the sins and paralysis of a crippled man, and straighten a man's withered hand. There were no doubts about Jesus' omnipotence.

The point of this Gospel is that, even though they knew Jesus had the power to calm the seas and the wind, they began to doubt whether he would do so. It is a display of their failure to believe in Jesus' love for them. In St. Mark's version of the same scene, as they startled Jesus from what must have been a very deep and long-overdue sleep on an uncomfortable and rocky boat, they asked, "Master, do you not care that we are perishing?"

Do you not care?! They had begun to doubt whether Jesus gave a hoot whether they drowned in the lake. They had begun to question whether he was indifferent to their plight, as if he didn't care whether they died.

Jesus' whole life, of course, is an answer to that question. He did care that we were about to die and that was the reason why the Son of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, took our human nature and was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

He cared enough that he spent himself to the point of exhaustion teaching, healing the sick and comforting the afflicted.

He cared enough ultimately to take our place on death row, giving his life so that we might survive. Like Jonah, who was tossed into the sea in order to calm the ferocious storm of the sea, so Jesus tossed himself overboard to quell the tempests that were causing us to die. As he hurled himself into the abyss from the Cross, he calmed the storm of sin so that we might reach the eternal shore.

He did care!

The problem was that the apostles doubted in his loving concern. In this the twelve were like the twelve tribes of Israel 1300 years before. After they had witnessed God's hand in the ten plagues of Egypt, after they had seen him part the Red Sea, after they had seen pharoah's horsemen and chariots perish in the sea, after they had witnessed Moses' strike the rock to provide them water, after they had been fed miraculously with manna and then quails from heaven, after they had seen the thunder and lightening of Moses' conversations with God on the top of Mt. Sinai, the Jews continued to doubt in God's love for them.

They obviously knew that God had the power - he had already shown them this power on all these occasions - but they doubted whether he would continue to use that power to help them. "

Was it because there were no graves in Egypt," they complained to Moses, "that you have taken us away to die in the desert?" (Ex 14:11).

Whenever anything got difficult, they grumbled. They doubted. They began to whether God's solicitude had an expiration date. His past actions didn't factor into their equation. 

The same thing was happening with their descendants in the boat. They had witnessed Jesus' power and his goodness on so many occasions, but they began to wonder whether his love - not his power - had a limit. They began to question whether he was indifferent to their plight.

It was, simply put, a lack of faith in who he was, based on a failure to grasp the meaning of all he had done up until then.

That's why Jesus, as soon as he had awakened turned to his followers and said, "Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?"

The same lack of faith that happened to the Jews in the desert and to the apostles on the Sea of Galilee can happen to all of us. Generally, few of us question whether God has the power to work a miracle, but very often we begin to wonder whether he has the will. We, too, can begin to think that he is indifferent to our plight.

When we're assailed by the storms of sorrow, the downpours of doubt, the twisters of uncertainty, the hail of anxiety, and the blizzards of loneliness, we can start to imagine that he is having sweet dreams while we're experiencing nightmares. We can start to reckon that he's snoring while we're screaming for help.

This happens when we, like the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles, begin to forget all that the Lord has done for us up until now and what that shows about who he is and how loved we are by him.

As St. Paul wrote to the Romans, "If God didn't even spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, would he not give us everything else along with him? (Rom 8:32). If God the Father was willing to allow his Son to be brutally killed so that we might live, he is going to respond with love in every circumstance, by giving us what he knows we need. But we need to have faith in him and in the power of his love.

The apostles were anxious in the boat because they were paying more attention to the waves and to the winds around them than to the presence of Jesus with in the boat. The same thing happens with us. We need to focus more on Christ than on our problems. This is the mark of a life of faith. Jesus turns to us in the midst of whatever hardship we are experiencing and says, "Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?"

To believe in him means not just to trust in his power, but to have faith in his goodness and love.

There are many possible applications of the lessons we learn from this Gospel, but I'd like to focus on one storm that is buffeting us in order to examine whether or not we are responding with faith.

There are strong waves of attacks on the institutional Church by some forces in Hollywood and in the media, in various legislatures and courts, and in popular culture. There are increasingly strong winds howling against the barque of Peter by those in favor of things hostile to God's plans, like abortion or same-sex marriage, trying to treat the behavior that got Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed as sacramental rather than sinful. And there are also problems inside the boat due to recent scandals. Many wonder whether the barque is about to capsize.

But Jesus is still in the boat.

It is one thing when bleak predictions of the Church's demise come from those outside the Church. We can expect that, because those outside the Church are just looking at the numbers and the numbers are trending toward a future less glorious and faithful than the past, at least in the West.

But more often than not, these morose prognostications come from within the Church, from those who should be looking at the situation with eyes of faith.

People within the Church should remember that the Lord is still in the boat.  He wants us to respond to the present inclement spiritual weather with faith in him. He wants us to live a life of trusting communion with him that will banish any fears or anxieties we have.

One consequence of this type of faith is to join him in the boat by coming to Mass - and not just weekly because we have to, but whenever we can, because we want to.

Another sign of this type of living faith is to help him row the boat, just like the apostles did, rather than think we can just come along as sight-seers on a cruise. One of the reasons why the waves are rocking the boat of the Church so much is because it's hard to keep the boat pointing in the right direction when there are really only a few people taking up oars or lifting the sails. He wants us all to recognize that we're not passengers; we're crew.

A third consequence of faith is that we have to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus in the boat and focused with him on the distant shore, rather than be distracted by the various winds and waves. This happens in a life of prayer, where we, as the Psalm today repeats, keep his mercy before our eyes. The reason why so many people are drowning in problems and anxiety is because all they see is the waves, not Christ. 

The problems that often confront the Church do not flow from the fact that has been asleep, but that we have been asleep. It's not that Jesus is doing nothing, but that we've been doing so little.

This Year of Faith is a time for us to reawaken from our slumber and with him start to fill the boat, the new Noah's ark, with all those people whom Jesus wants with us to disembark on at the eternal port of heaven.
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Father Roger Landry is pastor of St. Bernadette Parish in Fall River, MA and national chaplain of Catholic Voices USA. His homilies and articles are found on catholicpreaching.com

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