WHO IS THIS? June 23, 2024

In the Gospel we hear that once when Our Lord and the Apostles were crossing the Lake of Gennesaret, a great storm blew up while Our Lord was asleep in the boat. The boat was buffeted by wind and waves and was beginning to fill with water. The disciples began to panic. In their terror of impending death they woke Jesus and berated Him, “Don’t you care? We’re going to drown!” Our Lord’s reaction on awaking was simply and immediately to command the storm to cease. Instantly it did so, and the Evangelist tells us “there was a great calm”. Lake Gennesaret is not really so big, though big enough to terrify a boatful of men to fear of death!

          This planet on which we live is infinitesimally small when seen in the context of the visible universe beyond the sky. And yet even all that is under God’s complete authority. That is the challenge Our Lord puts before us today. Do we believe that He is really in control of the universe? Much more importantly, do we believe that He orders everything to our final good?

The first reading today comes from the final part of the Old Testament Book of Job, when Almighty God tells Job and his friends the truth about His awesome power. We cannot understand it all. Ultimately, God is beyond our comprehension, and we must accept that. But He is not so far beyond our powers of understanding that we cannot recognise with awe and wonder His providential love for us. Our Lord’s final words to the disciples - “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?”- are not so much a rebuke as an invitation. It is as though He says to them: “See now what I can do for you. Therefore put your trust in me. But remember that you must trust me in order to receive what I have to give.”

God is infinitely powerful and loving. In His love for us He invites us to trust in Him. He does not “control” the world and the cosmos as we might try to do, by tweaking now one thing, now another. He allows us to live out our lives yet to learn to call on Him for help when we need Him, if we will accept Him.                 

~ FR. PAUL DOBSON