Good Shepherd Catholic Parish

12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 23, 2024 (Season B)

          Peace be with you on this, our celebration of the 12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  Well, the Church has certainly given us a lot to think about with our readings today.  The Gospel reading from Mark is a story we should all be well familiar with.  A stormy night on the Sea of Galilee, panicky disciples, a sleeping Jesus, then an awakened Jesus calming the Sea, and finally the question, “Do you not yet have faith?”  Scholars have probably piled up enough paper writing about this story to sink that boat without a storm.  I will talk about the Gospel story but initially I’d like to touch on the first reading from the Book of Job for a couple of minutes.  The Bible story that frustrates so many.

          You all know Job’s story, right?  Basically, it’s kind of a, bad things happening to good people story.  You see, Job was written at a time and to a culture that believed if a man was suffering it usually meant he had sinned.  Yet here we have good old Job, a righteous man who is now suffering with all kinds of calamities in his life.  So, today’s reading starts at the beginning of Chapter 38 with God finally speaking, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm.”  Oh great!  God is going to explain why Job, even though he is a wonderful guy, is suffering with so many miseries.  NOT!  This discourse from God goes from Chapter 38 all the way to Chapter 41 but, all it seems to do is add to the mystery.  When God finally speaks, it is to pose questions of His own.  God, in His divine wisdom, enters not to solve problems but to reframe them.  “Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place?”  These four chapters from Job ultimately display the abyss of God’s love through creation.

          Friends, I’m not sure how the ancient Jews felt about the Book of Job but now, the good news for us is not a promise to fix all our suffering on earth.  We are not mere problems to be solved but people to be loved.  The love of Christ is the good news, a love so profound that even death cannot pose a problem.  As we contemplate the paradox of love, suffering, and forgiveness offered on the Cross of Jesus Christ, the Book of Job is finally understood.  Jesus is the best man with the worst fortune.  His suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension unites us with God the creator of everything.  My sisters and brothers, G.K. Chesterton, an expert in the literary arts, aptly described the book of Job as a “riddle” because Job’s suffering seemed to make no sense.  We now know; however, Jesus is the answer to the riddle.

So now in the Gospel reading Jesus, the one without sin, the perfect righteous man, gets into the boat and says, “Let us cross to the other side.”  From a spiritual perspective that short phrase can have a lot of meaning because we know Jesus said it, and we know all about Jesus, right?  As Catholic Christians we now know the whole Jesus story.  We know he is fully human and yet fully divine.  We know he is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, coeternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  We know he reopened the gates of heaven for all of us by his own suffering, death, and resurrection.  We know Jesus Christ is God and we know God is love.

          So, in the Gospel, the Church and most scholars tell us Jesus and his disciples in the boat traveling across the Sea of Galilee can spiritually be seen two ways.  First, the boat is the whole Church herself traveling with Jesus through space and time encountering all the storms and difficulties throughout history.  Or second, we can view it as our own personal journeys through time with Jesus always there to calm the storms in our own lives.  Today, I’d like to talk about the personal journey with Jesus.

          Friends, I start each day with a little prayer by Thomas Merton.  The prayer starts this way, “My Lord God, I cannot see the road ahead of me.  I do not know for certain where it will end.”  And the prayer ends with these words, “I will trust you always Lord, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death I will not fear, for you are ever with me.  You will never leave me to face my perils alone.  Amen.”  Great words Father Merton but hard to follow. 

          The reading from Mark’s Gospel we heard today presents the spiritual dynamics of fear and trust.  Making their way across the lake in their tiny boat, the disciples stand symbolically for all of us journeying through life within the confines of fear controlled by our own egos.  The ego is fundamentally persuaded there is nothing beyond itself upon which it can rely.  Unfortunately, this is a typical condition brought on by our own 21^st Century Western Culture.  The modern attitude our culture teaches and encourages is, “I am completely in control of my own life.”  Why and how does this happen?  It’s simple, Jesus is asleep in the back of our boat.  The sleeping Jesus stands here for the divine power that is literally asleep within all of us, indeed within the very confines of the ego.  When in reality, Jesus symbolizes the divine energy that remains unaffected by the fear generated by the grasping ego.

          This beautiful narrative from Mark’s Gospel seems to suggest that if we but awaken to the presence of Christ within us all, if we live in basic trust rather than fear, then we can withstand even the most frightening storms.  Lord, I know your divine presence is within me.  Help me to prevent my own ego from taking control.