A recording of today's gospel and reflection can be accessed here.
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Today’s gospel (Matthew 8: 23-27) offers us a scene that
says something both about Christ and about His Church. Jesus and the disciples
have boarded a boat and set out across the waters and before long the Lord
falls asleep. He awakens to the sight of the disciples panicking at the
strength of the sudden storm that has blown up and is tossing their vessel.
Jesus then rebukes both the disciples and the wind, the disciples for their
weak faith, the wind for its rage, and all becomes calm again to the
astonishment of the disciples.
Perhaps we are tempted to see Jesus sometimes as separate
from the Church, He up in Heaven or in the tabernacle, the Church over here
somewhere. Our limitations in seeing this relationship are a little like the limitations
of the early heresies about the incarnation which could not cope with the fact
that God had made Himself incarnate in a human nature, true God, true man. He
appeared to the eye as a man, and so indeed He was, and yet He was the Second
Person of the Trinity. God Himself, walking the earth, He did not merely clothe
His appearance in the flesh and garments of a first century Jew from Nazareth,
but he really was a Jew from Nazareth, born of a woman, a descendent of many
generations. So many of the truths of the faith are a paradox, calling us out
from our little reductive schemas and narrow materialism, and urging us to open
our minds to a mystery that is beyond us if not for faith. So too is the Mystical
Body, His body and yet His believers too.
And so, we come to the Church which is conjured in this
gospel scene by the comical image of twelve burly, bearded blokes, wetting themselves
in craven fear that the boat will be upended by the waves and they lost. What,
even the fishermen, we wonder – although St Matthew was one of the non-seafarers
on the crew and treats the disciples here as one body: united, of one mind and
heart but gripped in an unholy communion of conformist, lemming-like panic.
Jesus’ judgement upon them when He is woken is swift and
decisive: why are you so frightened, you men of little faith? That’s a
bit harsh, isn’t it, we might wonder… But then, by this point in the gospel,
the disciples had already witnessed countless miracles in Galilee, notably that
of the humble leper, the healing of the Centurion’s servant who was not even
present, and multiple exorcisms which showed His authority over the world of
the spirit. Why then did they have such little faith, they who had been given
so much reason to believe? Multiple times in Matthew’s gospel and in the other
gospels, Jesus will ask His disciples that simple question: do you not yet
understand? Despite all the miracles, despite all the proofs, despite all the
light the Lord shone upon them, they misunderstood His teachings, His words,
His very identity, and most especially the logic of His sufferings and death.
Yet, ultimately, it does not matter what we know if our
hearts are not daily transformed by such knowledge; it does not matter how pure
and upright our knowledge of doctrine is if our wills are as cold as the dying
embers of a neglected fire. And, so, what we see in the boat during the storm
are not men who know nothing of the Lord with every excuse for despair. Rather,
we see men who have been given every reason to hope in Him and yet have not
risen from a slavery of the heart.
Why are they so frightened? Let us answer for them, for we
answer for ourselves: we are so frightened because despite His invitation, our yes
is not pronounced from the very depths of our selves; we are frightened because
our thank you is drowned out by the constant whataboutism of our unconscious
needs and desires (what about safety, what about security, what about
suffering, we unconsciously obsess to ourselves); we are frightened because our
contemplation is as yet so shallow that we have not yet been transformed in Him
sufficiently, our wills and minds, imaginations and senses, rule us still too
much, and we cannot yet say with St Paul: I live; now not I but Christ lives
in me. O we of little faith!
O Jesus, rebuke the winds and waves of our needs and wilful
weaknesses; rebuke the fears that hold us back from your invitation. In the
midst of a Church sometimes full of the rage and fury of the demons or else almost
becalmed in a whispering chill breeze of infidelity, let us not lose our faith
in your power and your loving Heart:
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm,
O still, small voice of calm.
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