Saturday in the Third Week of Ordinary Time, January 28, 2023

Mark 4, 35-41

On that day, as evening drew on, Jesus said to his disciples: “Let us cross to the other side.” Leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them in the boat just as he was. And other boats were with him. A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!” The wind ceased and there was great calm. Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” They were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

St. Mark is not normally interested in linking the events in his Gospel according to their sequence in time, but he does this here: “On that day.”  When St. Matthew tells the same story, he does not do this.  Reading his account, we are left wondering if Jesus departed for the other coast the same day as the events previously narrated, or several days later.  St. Peter, from whom Mark heard this story, included this detail of chronology because he saw the connection between the parables the Lord had told earlier in the day and the crossing of the sea that evening.  

“Let us cross to the other side.”  This direction of the Lord made the Apostles wonder.  The Lord does not say what their destination is or why he wants to go there.  But they knew very well that across the sea lay Gentile lands, including that of the Gerasenes.  There seemed no reason for going there.  But the obedient Apostles went aboard their boat and took Jesus in the boat with them “as he was”, which perhaps means that he did not take off any of his clothes and hold them over his head to keep them dry as he got into the water to get into the boat.  “And other boats were with him.”  This might indicate that this was the time when the fishing, on which this region depended, began.  

“A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up.”  Mark’s breathless language is almost impossible to translate into good English.  For instance, he uses the word for “and” sixteen times during the telling of the story.  He also makes great use of the present and imperfect tenses, which indicate continuous action in the present and in the past, respectively.  This verse could be translated: “There is a huge squall of wind and the waves were crashing into the boat so that it is filling now.”  These are the words of one who is living the scene as he is telling about it.  “Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.”  The Lord, his clothes already soaked because of how he came into the boat, had fallen into a deep sleep even so, and he remained in this state after the violent storm had come upon them.  He must have been hard to see since he was on the floor of the boat’s stern.  He might have been stepped on by scrambling feet in the dark of the storm.

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  If we think about it, this is an odd question to ask in this situation.  The storm in threatening to capsize the boat, the rain is coming at them in gliding, nearly horizontal sheets, the waves of the sea are filling the boat, and the Apostles are bailing like mad.  At the point in which they find and wake up Jesus, they must have thought they were dead men.  But they do not tell the Lord to bail with them, or to grab onto something that floated and jump overboard (though he would have been weighed down by his heavy wet clothes).  They ask him if he cares or not that they are about to drown.  It is the question a child might ask when his world seems to be turned upside down while the adult is oblivious, thinking about his own concerns.  But the Apostles have seen displays of his power.  Surely he could do something here.  We see trust, based on their experience.  But it has not yet become Faith, which it will through God’s grace and their desire to believe.

“Quiet! Be still!”  The Lord’s voice thundered out against the thunder and triumphed over it.  This was the voice of the One who, at the time of creation, had rebuked the pounding waves and driven them back from the land: “Hitherto shall you come, but no further: and here shall your proud waves be stayed” (Job 38, 11).  “The wind ceased and there was great calm.”. God says through the Psalmist, “Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, and I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalm 46, 10).  The world of nature recognized the voice of its Creator and lay still at his feet.

“Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”  This verse could also be translated, “Why are you terrified?  Because you do not have faith.”  The Lord asks a question, waits for a response from the badly shaken Apostles, and then answers it for them.  He does not rebuke them, but points out a fact, one that goes back to the two parables he had earlier that day told them and the crowds about faith.  He is teaching them that they need it, but do not yet have it, despite all their trust, for faith is a supernatural gift for which they are not yet ready.

“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”  These words underline the fact that they do not have faith yet and are not yet ready for it.  They ask the question but do not speak the only possible answer.  

We, like the Apostles in the early days of their knowing the Lord, know that he has power and we trust that he can use that power.  But do we really trust him with our lives, believing him to be God, with unlimited power and knowledge?  Do we believe in him enough to stop expecting to have to do everything for ourselves?