Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In this Word of God today we can see the love He has for us but there are two ways to interpret it. One is to do so moralistically; by saying I have no faith; I am a mess like the disciples. In order not to suffer, I have to have faith to calm the storms of life. All of this is a moralistic way of thinking. However, God does not demand anything from us, and he knows what is in our heart. He created us so he knows who we are and that is why I want to encourage you not to punish yourselves. For sure the Lord knows who we are, and he loves us with a tenderness beyond our wildest dreams.
He knows that there is little or no faith in us, but faith was not needed to calm the storm. He knew that they did not have faith and nonetheless he commanded the wind and the sea to be quiet. Our Lord is speaking to the devil when he says be quiet, shut up. It is the same devil that is constantly speaking to us. Only a voice of authority can silence him. It is only Jesus Christ who can quiet the demon; the word we have heard shuts him up and calms him down.
When you hear the devil in this Eucharist, the word of Christ exorcises him and tells us not to listen anymore to Satan, as we heard in the first reading. Through the devil and his friends, we hear a constant murmuring against God: you did it all wrong, everything is a disaster, my history is all a mistake. He tells you this when you lose a child or your goods or you have a serious illness, or whatever. Job says in response to the lies of the devil: the Lord gives, and the Lord takes it away, blessed be the name of the Lord. In this Eucharist Christ comes to silence the devil by his Word and by the preaching. He tells the devil to shut up! And he does not need the faith of the disciples to do it. The disciples did not have faith and they did not drown in the sea.
The Lord knew that they did not have faith and he was the one who told them to ‘cross to the other side’. It is Christ who tells them to do so. It is he who takes them into the boat and says let’s pass to the other side. This expression—pass to the other side—is a wonderful symbol of Easter, or Passover, Pasqua. It means to ‘pass over’ to the other shore. It means you can convert today; you can pass to chastity today; you can love your wife today. You will be able to leave here today and never go back to that hatred; you can leave here today with a heart that passes over from hatred to love. You can forgive the one who did an injustice to you this week; you can forgive, you can love, you can understand your children and be faithful to your spouse. Every time you come to the Eucharist you can pass to the other side, and you can be in the hands of the Lord. How sad it would be to not move to the other side and to stay stuck in your projects, on the shore of your reason. The Lord says, let’s go into the boat, which is the Church, your community, and pass to the other side. For the people of Israel, the sea and the wind symbolize the devil.
Where do the demons live? When Jesus exorcises a man possessed by demons he asks him, what is your name? And they answer: Legion, for we are many. This poor man was trapped with a thousand demons in him. And they beg the Lord not to send them into the sea, so he sends them into the pigs. Pigs are a cursed animal for Israel. The demons enter the pigs and throw themselves into the sea. They return to their home, which is the sea. This is what the Jews believed so when the sea is violent, they say it was a demon that stirred up the sea. Remember the story of Jonah when the sailors find him on the boat, and they say the gods are punishing us; it was not God who was moving the waters; it was the devil.
When the storm is raging and the boat was filling up with water, Jesus is asleep in the boat. He is calm and sleeping well because he is the only one in the boat who has conquered death. You and I cannot beat death; we will always be afraid so we can call upon the Lord to awaken him. We tell him let’s go to the other shore because we cannot do it alone. By myself, I sink. But if you have the Lord, the tempest will calm down. The devil will have no power. Lord, you can calm my lust, you can calm my desire for money, you can calm my murmuring about my history. Only you can calm the resentment I have towards my father or towards my mother-in-law, or towards my children. You can calm the storm. The gospel said there was a ‘great calm’.
Now this does not mean that a Christian lives always in a great peace. There are some who want to live in a spiritual nirvana and not get involved with anything. They get spiritually stoned. They want to be in a place where they can feel good about themselves but they don’t change. They stay the same and it can happen to us. So come to the Eucharist to hear a Word from God, to hear the preaching, to receive communion and be at peace.
What is the biggest storm that the disciples experience in the gospel today? It is not so much the wind and the sea! It is when they asked him, “Teacher, did you not care that we are perishing?” Did you not care that we were going to die? That is the worst storm, to believe that God does not love you, that he is not there, that he doesn’t give a damn about you.
This is not true. The Lord loves us, brothers and sisters. This gospel is an impressive sign of the Lord’s love, even if you have judgements against him for your history or your current situation, because you don’t have a job or you don’t have money. Don’t let the devil convince you to murmur against the Lord, to tell you that he doesn’t care about you.
The same question appears in the gospel about Martha and Mary when Martha asks Jesus, “Don’t you care that my sister has left me alone to do all the serving?” What confidence she has with Christ. Lord, don’t you care that I don’t have a job, don’t you care that I have this disease, that I am dying? Don’t judge the Lord. He will come to pass you to the other side, and you can experience a great calm and his great love in the midst of your worst trials.
Do not enter the storm because of the lies of the devil but enter the real storms because of the disease that you have, because of your economic precariousness while you are out of work, because of your loneliness. You can enter calmly, with joy, because the Lord has risen and overcomes death. You can walk above the waters if you are in the boat with Christ. He is not hiding in the boat of the Church, of your community. If you do not want to sink, stay in the church with Christ, live the sacraments, listen to the Word and the preaching and one day you will pass to the other side and be filled with joy.