22 June 2006

Homily - 25 June 2006

Says Jesus today, "Quiet! Be still!" (Mark 4:39). These two commands of his may at first seem odd, and even perhaps out of character, but if we take a closer look into these two commands we will come to learn something deeper and more profound about what it means to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He gives these two commands in the midst of a turbulent storm as the disciples feared for their lives because of its seeming strength. To these disciples, we can attribute the words of the Psalmist today, "His command raised up a storm wind, which tossed his waves on high. The mountain up to heaven; they sank to the depths; their hearts melted away in their plight" (Psalm 107:25-26).

As the waters of the sea threatened to overcome the disciples, they seem to have forgotten him in whose company they were; they failed to recognize the one who himself has power over the very seas and the wind because he has created all things. In their anxiety and in their worry, they did not recognize the calm and quiet power of Christ, who slept in their very midst.

We know of course that in the life of every disciple of Jesus, he will find himself at one time or another in the midst of very difficult situations and circumstances, the very waters of which seem to threaten life or faith itself. It was St. Peter who first wrote to us:

In this you rejoice, although now for a little while you may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire, may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (I Peter 1:6-7).
But why do these trials and storms come upon us? The Prince of the Apostles tells us this: "For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example that you should follow in his footsteps" (I Peter 2:21). Even today, the Successor of Peter, Pope Benedict XVI, encourages us, saying, "The Lord does not close his eyes to the needs of his children, and if he seems at times insensitive to their requests, it is only in order to test them and to temper their faith" (Angelus Address, 14 August 2005), and "The Lord’s ways are not easy, but we are not made for ease" (Address to his Countrymen, 25 April 2005).

At times it seems to us as though the Lord has left us; it seems as though the Lord is asleep and completely deaf to our cries, and so - with the disciples - we go to him, we rouse him from his slumber, we bring our storm into his calm - and we cry out to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" (Mark 4:38). We can be sure that just as Jesus answered the disciples so he answers us as well: "Quiet! Be still!"

Some might say to me, "Father, Jesus said these words to the wind and the waters, not to the disciples," and in saying so they would be correct; but at the same time we hear the Psalm and thus learn that the disciples "rejoiced that they were calmed, and he brought them to their desired haven"(Psalm 107:30). Here then, we see that Jesus says, "Quiet! Be still!" to both the sea and the disciples.

When Job found himself in a similar situation and demanded an answer to the Lord as to why he had suffered so greatly when he himself was a righteous and upright man, the Lord rebuked him, saying,

Who shut within doors the sea, when it burst forth from the womb; when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling bands? When I set limits for it and fastened the bar of its door, and said: Thus far shall you come, but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stilled! (Job 38:8-11).
Within this response of the Lord to Job we might well hear the Lord saying to him as well, "Quiet! Be still!"

This is not to say that we cannot ask these questions of the Lord when we find ourselves in difficult times and circumstances which we cannot begin to fathom. We want to know why and we certainly can ask these questions of the Lord - and in some instances it is only proper that we do so - but at the same time we must always realize who we our and who God is. We must realize that he alone has power over the tempests of life.

At the same time the more that we yell at him, the more that we question him, the less likely we are to hear him speaking to us in the depths of our heart. It has been said that God speaks in silence. God does not speak through loud noises but through quiet and through solitude. Jesus commands us to be quiet so that we can hear him calling within us in the "tiny whispering sound" through which the Prophet Elijah heard him speak (I Kings 20:12).

In his short little book, The Rosary: A Journey to the Beloved, Gary Jansen suggests that:

God is a chatterbox. I say that only slightly tongue-in-cheek, because God never stops talking to us. The reason we suffer, the reason we feel fear, the reason we feel disjointed and unfocused and lost is because we don’t realize that at any given moment the answer to all our questions, the balm for all our suffering is right in front of us. We just don’t realize it. Why? Because most of the time we don’t shut up (p. 13).
How true this is! We spend our day surrounded by constant noise: the conversation of family and friends, the television at home, the radio in the car or at work, the musak in stores, the rumble of trucks and motorcycles on the street, our cell phones and Ipods, the songs we hum in our head. We are, to be quite honest and frank, afraid of silence.

At first we feel utterly alone in silence and we are uncomfortable. When this feeling of abandonment comes upon we must remember that as the Holy Father said at his Inaugural Mass, "Those who believe are never alone – neither in life nor in death" (Inaugural Homily, 24 April 2006). The Lord Jesus is always with us, even and especially in the midst of the storm.

As the storms of life engulf us we very often try to cling to things, to people, to memories, to work, to hopes, dreams, and plans, and yet the more we grasp the more pain we feel. When the storms of life sweep over us, we must cling only to Jesus Christ for in him alone "new things have come" (II Corinthians 5:17). We must cling only to him who is Love itself, for "everything in this world will pass away. In eternity only Love will remain" (Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, 25 March 2006).

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