NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
13 AUGUST 2023
Jesus has
just fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. This miracle boosts the faith of the
disciples, who see that Jesus is greater than Moses, who had trusted that God
would feed his ancestors with manna in
the desert. Jesus dismisses the crowds
and makes his disciples get into the boat to precede him to the other side of
the Sea of Galilee. Then he goes up to
the mountain to pray. As the disciples
encounter a fierce storm on the water, they are frightened.
However,
they are not alone. United with the
Father and the Holy Spirit, Jesus is praying for them. To show that his prayer is not some spiritual
abstraction, Jesus walks toward them on the water during the fourth watch of
the night (between 3 and six o’clock in the morning). In fear, they think that he is a ghost. But Jesus responds with the words that Moses
heard from the burning bush: “It is I,”
or “I am who am.” Peter wants
proof. Jesus invites him to walk toward
him. As long as Peter keeps his eyes on
Jesus, he defies all the rules of gravity.
But when he is distracted by the raging storm, he begins to sink. Jesus grabs him by the hand, pulls him to
safety, and calms the storm. The
disciples put their faith in Jesus as the Son of God.
We who are
the Lord’s disciples have all been rocked by storms in our lives. Today’s readings remind us that fear is a
normal reaction. Elijah was afraid when
Queen Jezebel sent her armies to kill him.
He ran into the desert and asked for death. Instead, the Lord sent an angel to give him
water and hearth cakes to sustain him in his journey to Mount Horeb (the
northern kingdom’s name for Mount Sinai).
Peter and the other disciples are afraid as the storm tosses their boat
about on the waves. Jesus proves that he
is not a ghost when he invites Peter to get out of the boat and walk on the
water.
Doubt is
also part of faith. After winning an
incredible victory over the prophets of Baal, Elijah doubts whether the Lord is
really with him. When he reaches Mount
Horeb, he expects to experience God in the ways that God had revealed himself
to Moses and the Israelites with fire, wind, and earthquake. Instead, he experiences the Lord’s presence
in a tiny whispering sound. When Peter
takes his eyes off Jesus and feels the wind, he begins to sink into the
water. Jesus responds to his cry for
help by grasping him by the hand and pulling him up.
On Mount
Horeb, Elijah’s faith is renewed, and the Lord sends him back to continue his
mission. Once the storm is calmed, the
disciples realize that only God has power over storms, and they profess their
faith in Jesus as the Son of God. When
we express our fear and work through our doubts, we too can become more
convinced that the Lord is with us and will not abandon us. At different times in our lives, the Lord
invites us to leave the familiar and safe ground on which we have been walking
and walk toward him on unfamiliar territory.
Young people need to reflect on how the Lord is calling them to live out
their baptismal promises. It is
frightening, but maybe the Lord is calling some of you to a vocation of
religious life, marriage, or priesthood.
Mason Bailey is getting out of this familiar boat of Saint Pius to walk
toward him as a seminarian at Saint Meinrad.
In the course of all of our lives, we encounter thresholds that force us
to leave the familiar and safe ways of living and walk through a new threshold
to begin new chapters in life.
In these threshold moments, we may
be afraid. We may even doubt. But, if we work through our fears and doubts,
we can be convinced that the Lord is with us and will sustain us, as the Lord
did for Elijah and Peter. Sometimes we
will experience the Lord’s presence in dramatic ways. More often, we experience his presence in the
silence of our prayers, in the midst of a noisy and distracting world.
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