The Storm on the Lake

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Then he got into the boat followed by his disciples. Suddenly a storm broke over the lake, so violent that the boat was being swamped by the waves. But he was asleep.

“So they went to him and woke him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord, we are lost!’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you so frightened, you who have so little faith?’ And then he stood up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.

“They were astounded and said: ‘Whatever kind of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’” (Matt. 8:23-27).

God always listens to those who turn to Him for help. Throughout the Gospels we see Our Lord behaving in a way that is both natural and simple. He does not ask for vociferous acclamation from those who follow Him.

He works miracles without fuss or ostentation, avoiding publicity insofar as He is able. He charges the people He has cured not to go round telling everybody about the grace they have received.

He teaches that the Kingdom of God does not come with dramatic display. By the parables of the mustard seed (Matt. 13:31-32) and the leaven hidden in the dough (Matt. 13:33). He makes clear to everyone the mysterious power of His words.

We see Him silently listening to pleas for help, to which He later accedes. The silence of Jesus during His trial before Herod (Luke 23:8-9), and again before Pilate (Matt. 27:11-14), is filled with a sublime grandeur

We see Him standing in front of a clamorous, excited crowd who bring in false witnesses to try to catch Him out in His speech. We find particularly impressive God's silence as He stands in the midst of the uproar of the milling throng who have been aroused to fury by human passion (Luke 23:1-25).

That silence of Jesus is neither indifference nor an attitude of disapproval towards some poor creatures who offend Him. He is full of mercy and forgiveness.

Jesus Christ always hopes for our conversion. God knows how to wait. He has more patience than we have.

His silence on the Cross is not simply a reserving of His ebbing strength, the better to control His anger and utter a final condemnation. It is the ever-forgiving God who hangs there. He opens wide the compassionate channel of a new and definitive era of His mercy.

God always listens to those who make the decision to follow Him, even though sometimes it may appear that He may remain silent, that He doesn't want to listen to us.

He's always attentive to and considerate of the weaknesses of His creatures, but it is so that He can forgive them and help them to rise up higher. If at times He keeps silent it is so that our faith, our hope, and our love may grow more mature.

In this scene of the Gospel (Matt. 8:23-27), we can contemplate Jesus wearied after a day of intense hard work preaching. He got into a boat with His disciples in order to cross to the other side of the lake.

When they had been on the water for some time, a great storm arose, of such violence that the mounting waves threatened to swamp the boat.

The description of this storm is quite dramatic. It's no small little thunderstorm.

Meanwhile, Our Lord, utterly exhausted, has fallen asleep. This is the only occasion in Scripture where we see Our Lord asleep. We're given proof that He doesn't suffer from insomnia. Our Lord has no trouble falling asleep in the midst of this great storm.

He’s so tired also that even the crashing of the waves against the sides of the boat does not cause Him to wake up.

St. Mark describes this scene in vivid detail. Mark is writing the Gospel that Peter preached. He says that Our Lord was “in the stern of the boat, on the cushion, asleep” (Mark 4:38). Only someone in the boat could have seen those details. Mark is writing what Peter saw.

At a moment of such great danger, it seems as though Our Lord is not there.

The apostles, who are seasoned fishermen, realized immediately that their best efforts could not succeed in holding the boat's head to the wind, and they were particularly aware that their lives were in danger.

They could recognize a real storm when they saw one. The wind was funneling down through the mountains and whipping up those waves.

They went to Jesus and woke Him, shouting: “Save us, Lord, we are perishing.” Dramatic words.

Our Lord sort of wakes up from His sleep, very calmly, tries to reassure them: “Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?”

With this, Our Lord seems to be talking not just to the apostles, but to all of us, inviting us to have a greater faith and trust in God Our Father, particularly in difficult moments. There is no storm that He is not capable of calming.

It's as if He said to them, ‘Don't you realize that I am with you, and that this should give you an unwavering steadfastness even though you are surrounded by difficulties?’

Our Lord seems to be speaking to every single soul on this planet who might be faced with all sorts of fearful circumstances.

“Then,” we're told, “He rose up and rebuked the winds and the sea: ‘Peace, be still!’” (Mark 4:39).

Our Lord sort of gives us words to say to all our emotions, our passions, our heart, our imagination, our nerves. When they make it a little bit too much, when the storm seems to be raging, or we get too worried or anxious about certain things, we lose our peace: “Peace, be still!”

“Then,” we're told, “there was a great calm” (Matt. 8:26). Christ is capable of calming all the storms in our marriage, in our family, in our work, in our health, in our finances.

He leads us to have greater trust in Him as God Our Father: “If you, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?” (Matt. 7:11).

I heard a story recently about a couple of people who were on a boat in Lake Victoria and the little daughter of the captain of the boat, not such a big boat, was there.

There was quite a storm, quite a wind, and many people in the boat were very worried. But this little girl was very calm.

Somebody asked her, “Aren't you a little bit concerned that there's this big storm and anything might happen?”

And she said, “No, my Daddy is the captain of this boat and even if we go overboard and I don't know how to swim, I know he'll look after me.”

Our Lord has told us that we have to “become like little children” (Matt. 18:3) and try and have that response of that little girl in that situation always, on our lips and in our hearts.

After there was this great calm, the disciples were overcome with amazement, with peace and joy. God teaches us that He can restore our peace and our joy in all situations.

They were able to see for themselves yet again that to walk with Christ is to walk safely.

Even though the difficulties and the challenges and the storms and the shipwrecks may come, ultimately Christ triumphs. He's there at the end—and that, even though He may keep silent and seem not to be there at all.

St. Josemaría says in one of his books that at times when God seems to be absent, that is most when He's right beside us (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 22).

Often, He remains asleep in our boat, waiting for us to go and wake Him, waiting for us to turn to Him in prayer, with a childlike prayer that manifests that we believe and hope in Him, that He can solve all problems.

And they said: “What sort of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Matt. 8:27). He was their Lord and their God.

Later on, when the Holy Spirit came into their souls on Pentecost Day, they realized that they would often have to live in the midst of troubled waters, but that they would always have Jesus in their boat—the boat of Peter, the Church. And Peter's boat does not sink.

At times Our Lord might apparently seem to be asleep and silent and, to a certain extent, apparently absent. But even in that situation, He would always be as attentive to them as ever, and at the same time just as powerful.

We could say to Our Lord in our prayer: ‘Lord, increase my faith in you, especially in times of troubled waters. If there are troubled waters, then I know that you want those troubled waters. You've permitted them.’

Mother Angelica of EWTN used to say that “if God sends us tribulations, it's because he wants us to tribulate” (Mother Angelica, Answers, Not Promises).

But those can be moments of great virtue, of great supernatural outlook, great trust, and faith in God, times of great spiritual growth, where we can be more mindful of the fact that ‘I have a guardian angel, I can turn to my Mother, who's always looking for me. I can turn to St. Michael.’

We have a whole pile of spiritual weapons in our armory. Our Lord seems to say to them that He would never abandon them to their own devices. We're carried in the palm of a hand of a God who loves us (cf. Isa. 49:16).

They understood all this very well, when soon afterwards, at the beginning of their apostolic mission, when they had to “launch out into the deep” (Luke 5:4), they saw themselves beset with persecution and they felt the bitterness of being misunderstood by the pagan society in whose midst they carried out their activity.

Nevertheless, the Master gave them strength, kept them afloat, and encouraged them to embark upon yet more, greater, apostolic enterprises.

Like the apostles, we too have to be ready to “launch out into the deep,” to take on great projects, even though that may mean a greater weight on our shoulders and difficulties and problems and challenges and misunderstandings and miscommunications. It's all part of the equation.

Our Lord does the same with us now as He did with His first followers. All the little efforts we have to make to bring forward apostolic projects, and things don't seem to work out—but very often, it's just that God is acting behind the scenes.

Our Lord’s being asleep while His disciples were struggling, with every ounce of energy and nerve that they had, and felt themselves to be overwhelmed by the storms.

This is often compared to the silence that God may maintain as we work, and as we go about our business. It may frequently seem that God is paying no heed.

Martha turned to Our Lord and said, “Lord, does it not concern you that my sister has left me to serve alone?” (Luke 10:40). It looked as though God was paying no heed to her busyness and all the things she had to do, and to her activism.

It may seem that God is unconcerned about the difficulties that threaten and assail individuals and even the Church itself. But that's only the appearance.

When the hurricane rages and we find ourselves faced with similar situations, when all our efforts seem to achieve nothing, we have to follow the example of the apostles, turn to Jesus and put all our trust in Him: “Save us, Lord, we are perishing.”

Then we will feel the effectiveness of His infinite power and we'll be filled with confidence and serenity.

Like that little girl who came home from kindergarten school one day and told her Mom that today she had learned to trust in God. The mother was very impressed with this statement. She'd been all her life trying to learn how to trust in God.

She was curious and so she said to her little daughter, “So how? How did that happen? What was that all about?”

The little girl said, “There was a power failure, and the lights went out. And we all held hands when it was a bit dark. I told Jesus: ‘Jesus, I know you can bring the lights back on again.’ And the lights came on, and so I learned how to trust in God.”

Our Lord says to the apostles: “Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?” (Matt. 8:26). These big burly fishermen were also capable of great fear.

Fear can sometimes be a tool of the devil. He wants us to be afraid. He wants to discourage us, to bring us low, because then he can get us to do whatever he wants.

Our Lord says to them when He sees them overcome with anxiety, convinced that they're sinking: Why are you afraid? I am with you.

Christ is the certainty of certainties. John Paul II liked to say in Christ we find the meaning and the purpose of our life (cf. Pope John Paul II, Homily, World Youth Day, August 14, 1993).

It's enough to be with Him in His boat, where He can see us, for us to overcome all the fears we have and all the difficulties that we may encounter.

If we're ever overwhelmed by meager results and worry, and by trials, and by a sense of being misunderstood, or by temptations, we know that all we have to do is to turn to Our Father God for Him to listen to us. “If you, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?” (Matt. 7:11). How much more will He calm the storms?

A lack of trustful certainty only makes its appearance when our faith is weak. Such weakness does bring with it a lack of trust.

Precisely at such moments, we may forget that the greater the difficulty, the more powerful will God's help be.

This will always be the case when we strive to live our vocation as Christians fully, to practice the virtues, to be very loyal, trying never to do anything wrong, no matter what the consequences may be, no matter what our circumstances or situation—in our family life, in our work, in our marriage, in carrying out our apostolate.

Our Lord wants us to be filled with peace and serenity in all times and in all circumstances. “Do not be afraid, it is I,” He says to His disciples, who are terrified by huge seas (John 6:20).

On another occasion, He says: “I tell you, my friends, do not fear” (Luke 12:4). Our Lord wants to calm all our fears.

From the very first moment of His entry into the world, He showed what His presence among men would mean. The message of the Incarnation precisely begins with those words: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found grace with God” (Luke 1:30).

And likewise, to St. Joseph: “Do not be afraid, Joseph. son of David, do not fear” (Matt. 1:20).

To the shepherds, they were told by the angel: “Do not be afraid, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people” (Luke 2:10).

Our Lord doesn't want us to be afraid of anything. Even the holy fear of God is a form of love; it is nothing but the fear of losing Him.

Complete trust in God, using whatever means are necessary in each situation, can give us great strength, fortitude, and a special kind of serenity, whatever may happen, whatever tribulations we may have to face up to.

We should try and consider our divine filiation—our divine sonship or daughtership—frequently each day. That can lead us to speak to God as little children, not as if we're speaking to somebody far away who is indifferent and remote, who's cold and inattentive to us, but with the consciousness that we're talking to a Father who is concerned about every movement made by His children.

He has even told His Mother: “Behold your child” (cf. John 19:26). Keep looking at your child, and never stop looking at your child.

We come to look on Him as the friend who never lets us down, who's always ready to help and, if necessary, to forgive.

Close to Him, we learn to understand that every tribulation and all difficulties bring benefits to us men if we know how to accept them with faith, if we don't turn our backs on Him. “All things turn out for the good of those who love God” (cf. Rom. 8:28).

In The Way, we’re told: “Blessed be the hardships of this earth! Poverty, tears, hatred, injustice, dishonor. You can endure all things in him who strengthens you” (Phil. 4:13; J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 717).

St. Teresa, with the well-tried experience of the saint, has written: “If you have trust in Him and are of an encouraging heart—for His Majesty is a great friend of those with such an attitude—do not be afraid that you will want for anything” (Teresa of Jesus, Book of the Foundations).

The Lord looks after those who are His own, even when He appears to be asleep.

There may be times when God seems to keep silent. Some Christians—who appear to follow Christ so long as everything happens the way they want—but they turn away from Him when they have the most need of Him: when their child, or their husband, or their wife, or their brother, or their sister falls sick; or in times of financial stress; or when they’re hurt by calumny or defamation, or some of their friends turn their backs on them; or if in their interior life, they lose those agreeable feelings that at other moments may have made self-surrender and apostolate seem relatively easy.

Perhaps now, as a very special grace from God, a grace that purifies their intentions and their hearts, such feelings disappear and can give way to dryness and to a certain feeling of sadness.

Then, it is possible for them to think that God no longer listens to them, or that He is keeping silent, as though He were neutral as regards their predicament or indifferent to their concerns.

It's precisely then that we have to say to Jesus even more forcefully: “Lord, save us, we're perishing.” He never fails to respond. He always pays attention to us.

He turns to look to us just like He turned to Peter in his lowest moment, when Peter hit rock bottom when he heard that cock crow, when he realized he denied Him three times (Luke 22:56-62).

It could be that Our Lord is waiting for us to pray with greater intensity and rectitude of intention or waiting for us to abandon ourselves still more completely into His strong arms.

In every tribulation, in every difficulty, in every temptation, we must turn to Our Lord immediately.

Cardinal Newman says, “Seek his face whoever dwells all the time in the real and bodily presence in his Church. Do at least as much as the disciples did. They had but little faith; they feared; they had not any great confidence and peace, but at least they did not keep away from Christ. Do not keep from him,” he says, “but when you are in trouble, come to him every single day, asking him earnestly and perseveringly for those favors which he alone can give.

“And as he on the occasion spoken of in the Gospel blamed indeed the disciples, but did for them what they asked, so you should trust in his great mercy. Though he discerns many infirmities in you, which ought not to be there, yet he will deign to rebuke the winds and the sea and will say: ‘Peace, be still’—and there will be a great calm” (John Henry Newman, Faith and Prejudice and Other Sermons).

God wants our souls to be filled with serenity, even in the midst of tribulation. With this new peace that Our Lord brings to our hearts we will set off confidently to fight once again in those battles of peace—the external battles and those of the soul.

We will joyfully accept those annoying things that serve to purify us, and we will become more united to Him. We should not forget either, in such circumstances, that God has placed an angel beside us to look after us, to help us, and to carry our prayers the more easily into His presence.

“Whenever you are in need of anything, or are facing difficulties, whether great or small, invoke your Guardian Angel, asking him to sort the matter out with Jesus, or to carry out the particular service you may require” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 931).

In all the situations of our life, we know that God will calm the storms. And with Our Lady, we will be able to say: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and I rejoice in God my Savior” (cf. Luke 1:46).

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JM