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 ...

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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

SHORTER HOMILY . . . 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.

LONGER HOMILY FOLLOWS

Job is in the midst of a terrible crisis, but the Lord reveals himself as the one who has power over the chaotic and uncontrollable

God speaks to Job in the middle of the hurricane. Job has been going through a terrible period of trial and tribulation, an enormous test of his faith that brings him to a direct experience of God. And he experiences God in the midst of the storm, the suffering, the absurd. God proclaims himself in a strange way, in a way that Job did not expect. The Lord announces that he has power over the sea when it “leapt tumultuous out of the womb, when I wrapped it in a robe of mist and made black clouds its swaddling bands.” This poetic language evokes the account of how the Lord created the universe from chaos, darkness and non-governability. Yet these seas are easy for the Lord to control; the passage in Job tells us: “Come thus far, I said, and no farther: here your proud waves shall break”.

The disciples are crossing the water – an image of the Passover. But they seek to do it all by themselves, relying only on their own capacities.

In the Gospel the disciples comes to know the Lord in the interior of a storm. They ask themselves: “Who is this that even the seas and storms obey?” Of course there is only one person that the seas and elements obey – God himself. The disciples are crossing the lake. This is a classical Passover image – the crossing of water. But the disciples are undertaking this challenge all by themselves. This is the typical attitude of the human being: to rely on oneself. But he who seeks to depend only on himself will never get beyond himself, whilst he who puts his trust in God will arrive at a more profound knowledge of God.

It is only when the situation is desperate that we start to realize what really matters and begin to call on the Lord’s name

The image of God sleeping is curious and evokes the moment when Jesus will be sleeping in death after his crucifixion. On Holy Saturday, Jesus is shrouded in silence and impotence, and humanity is conscious of the evil that it has perpetrated in killing the Just One. The centurion, who presided over his killing, looks on Jesus and says, “Truly this is God”. Holy Saturday is the moment when we are stopped in our tracks and all we can do is seek the resist that which is greater than us: when we rage against the wind and the sea, against that which cannot be brought under control. How many marriages refuse to seek help, striving instead to do everything with their own miserable capacities, arriving ultimately at shipwreck! How many people refuse to renounce their absorption in themselves and their reliance on their own way of thinking! They need to awaken God! The Lord cannot enter our lives until we call out, “Enter! Wake up!” In the Gospel, Jesus waits until the boat is filled with water and ready to capsize. It is only then that the disciples realize that they cannot depend on their own talents to continue. It is only when the storm is at its height that we begin to ask ourselves, “What really counts in my life?” It is only then that the eternity of God begins to come into relief and that we start to call on his name. It is only when the situation is out of control that we begin to realize what really matters.

This Sunday let us call on the Lord’s name, asking him to control the chaos, disorder and storms in my life.

Jesus reveals that he is not merely their Master, but something much more. He tells the storm to abate and it does so immediately. This is the same dominion that Jesus reveals in his exorcisms. In the midst of all the storms of life, God has the power to manifest himself. He can block that which is disordered and chaotic within all of us. This Sunday we are all invited to say, “Lord there are many things that are greater than me. It is foolish of me to try to confront these things by myself. Wake up Lord and do that which you know to be right! Bring things to the conclusion that you and you alone wish. I know that you are my Lord. Help me to prostrate myself before you and be aware of who you are, instead of being constantly preoccupied by who I am”.