JUNE 20th 2021. TWELFTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
GOSPEL: Mark 4:35-41
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio
Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...
GOSPEL: Mark 4:35-41
With the coming of evening, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let us cross over to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind they took him, just as he was, in the boat; and there were other boats with him. Then it began to blow a gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, ‘Master, do you not care? We are going down!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Quiet now! Be calm!’ And the wind dropped, and all was calm again. Then he said to them, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’ They were filled with awe and said to one another, ‘Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.’
THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ
SUMMMARY
Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary time and the Gospel is from the fourth chapter of St Mark. Let us begin with the phrase that comes at the end of the passage: “Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?” This reveals that it is not just some simple story about Christ’s power over the elements. Rather, it is a paradigm of faith. Even though it is evening, Jesus directs the disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee, a sea that is very susceptible to bad storms at night. Of course, the phrase “to pass over to the other side” evokes the dramatic crossing of the Red Sea. It was a paradigmatic event of the faith for Israel and represents the event of liberation from slavery and entering into freedom. This is a characteristic of faith. It permits us to pass over to the other side at moments of anguish, at times when our own strengths fail. The disciples get into the boat and begin their journey and then the storm begins. There is always a storm in life! In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells the parable of the man who builds his house upon rock while the other builds it on sand. For both of them, the storm comes! Being built on rock does not stop the storm. What tends to happen in life is that we make God into a “pocket god”, someone we carry around in our pockets until the moment when he is needed. The disciples take Jesus in the boat and discover that they are not able to overcome the storm by themselves. Jesus is asleep and seems useless. In fact, we make Jesus useless by the way we reduce him to someone to be invoked only when all else fails. It is essential that we pass from a relationship of instrumentalising Jesus to a relationship of trusting abandonment. When the disciples finally invoke Jesus as Lord, which he is, he tells the storm to be silent. This is the same phrase used in exorcisms, because these forces of nature have in them the aspect of worldliness. It is worldliness that enters the boat and enters the Church and prevents the Church from accomplishing its mission. This is the story of the faith. Storms happen very often in life. When they occur, let us stop using the Lord and instead entrust ourselves to him. Faith is an experience of God in the storm. In the first reading, Job is living a time of great suffering but encounters God in the hurricane. Faith is the passing to the other side in the midst of our tribulations. Let us let go of the steering wheel (by which we also try to tell Jesus the way he should go) and give ourselves over to him. This is true of us individually and also for the Church as a whole. Let us consign ourselves into the hands of the Father.
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