Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”
The last several months have been difficult to say the least, and among the many challenges brought on by our world’s reaction to the coronavirus is the closing of churches, the cessation of Holy Mass, limitations on group meetings, and so on. Many of us have found ourselves distanced or even cut off from what were vital sources of spiritual, emotional, psychological, and physical nourishment; we might sympathize greatly with the apostles in our Gospel today, tossed about on the stormy waters, wondering if they might capsize and drown. But then they see something standing amid the waves: Jesus, walking upon the water. It was the fourth watch of the night, roughly 3am to 6am, the last hours before the sunrise; “It is a ghost!” they thought, rubbing their exhausted eyes, “…and they cried out in fear.”
Our Gospel says something remarkable: “…Jesus spoke to them…” He does not shout or scream; His words are able to pierce the roaring winds and waters like a bolt of lightning, with all the clarity and might of thunder: “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” We read that the boat was being “…tossed about by the waves…”; the Greek word here for “tossed” is often translated as “tormented”, and it is noted that the “…wind was against it.” They are not caught merely in an act of nature, but in a spiritual battle. You might think, “Father, it is just a storm at sea and they were afraid of drowning!” But notice the rest of the Gospel passage: Peter is invited to walk on water; it is not until Peter has faced his demons of doubt and landed a few blows that Jesus calms the storm. He first addresses the true crisis—the lack of faith—before addressing the matter that was causing them to doubt, which was the sense of peril brought about by the storm. “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Jesus says, rather than “Brothers, you were in no danger; it was only a storm.” The Enemy was at work her, using the occasion of the storm to encourage despair, fear, doubt, when just hours before they had witnessed the miracle of Jesus feeding over five thousand people with but five loaves of bread and two fish! Suddenly all that was out the window, forgotten, meaningless; they believed they were going to die in the waters. Thus Jesus offers them another miracle to bolster their failing faith, showing His mastery over the very forces of death, even giving Peter the opportunity to defy the Enemy and put the raging sea beneath his own feet. Though he faltered, those few steps upon the water were truly upon the head of the serpent: the faithful feet that would be the first to lead the Church, sometimes called “The Bark of Peter.” Peter lives out the Psalm: “The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction terrified me…He reached down from on high and seized me; drew me out of the deep waters,” (Psalm 18:5, 17).
When we read that “…the wind was against the boat…” and then read that Jesus called Peter, and no one else, out of the boat to walk upon the water, we might see our Church today, tossed about on the waves, all of us within, wondering what the future holds. We are afraid, wondering where Jesus is, frustrated with what sometimes feel like weak leaders and cowardly priests. We feel alone in the boat, but the same Enemy seeks to distract us from remembering our prior experience with Jesus, the miracles He has worked in our lives, how He fed us with His Body and Blood over and over again, preparing and fortifying us in preparation for the very trials we now endure. Do you forget, dear soul, that your Lord treads upon the waters of the deep? As the Psalm says “Through the sea was your way; your path, through the mighty waters, though your footsteps were unseen,” (Psalm 77:20). Yes, the Church is a ship, and thus we are led through the sea; we cannot see His footsteps as He has gone ahead of us across the tormenting waters, but “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). We yet have the Successor of Peter at the helm, and we know that the ship shall not sink, as in none of the Gospels does the boat of the apostles ever sink or wreck. So long as we remain in the boat, so long as we resist the temptation to fear, to despair, to doubt, even when it seems Jesus is not with us, if we but have faith, we will see Him there, among the towering waves, walking among us, speaking directly to our hearts, and when He enters the boat, those who have remained within it will know His peace, as the apostles did.
Trust Him: Jesus built this Church with the same hands by which He fashioned our salvation. The winds of the world, the tormenting waves of the Enemy are always against us, but they shall not prevail, for our Jesus walks upon those waves, and rebukes the wind. What is wind and water against the Rock?