Tuesday in the 13th Week of Ordinary Time, July 2, 2024

Matthew 8, 23-27

As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?”

Besides understanding the literal sense of this Gospel Reading we can understand it in spiritual terms such that it will be profitable for our understanding the place of the Lord Jesus in our lives.

Now, we have three possible states of the Lord with regards to the boat: the Apostles could have refused to take him on board so that he was not on it; that he was on the boat, but was asleep; that he was on the boat but was awake.  In his account of this event, St. Mark adds the detail that “they took him even as he was in the ship” (Mark 4, 36).  So if the Apostles had not taken him in the boat it was because they rejected him “as he was” — they wanted him to board just as they were, stripped. In the case where Jesus was asleep, he slept because no one wanted to talk to him.  He was neglected and left alone.  If the Apostles has wanted to talk to him and to pray, he would not have gone to sleep.  Therefore, if the boat left without Jesus, it would have sunk in the storm.  If he slept, there would be a storm but he would be awakened and begged for help and the boat would be saved.  If the Apostles had gathered around Jesus in the boat and listened to him and prayed, there would have been no storm or they would have barely noticed it.

Looking at the Reading in these terms we see that without Christ, our lives are a shipwreck, a disaster.  If we begin to live his life but neglect prayer, we will experience great hardship and fear until we cry out to him and he “wakes” when it pleases him and calms us.  If, however, we live his life — taking the ship in the direction he desires — and spend time praying to him, we will be so rapt in him that hardly any outside, worldly danger or enticement will matter to us.

We can think also about the storm itself.  If the storm was so bad with Jesus in the boat, how bad would it be if he were not?  The storm as described in the Gospel did not sink the ship at once, but with time it tortured the Apostles with terror of drowning despite their efforts.  With Jesus in the boat, the Apostles had at least the hope that he would do something to help them.  If they had rejected Jesus and the storm had come upon them they would have known that there was no hope for them, plus the knowledge that they had rejected the one thing that could have saved them.  They would have been filled hate for themselves and for each other as their plight became ever more desperate.

Let us welcome the Lord Jesus in our lives “as he is” with all his teachings and all the demands he makes on us; let us let him choose our destination and our path to it; and let us gather around and pray to the Creator of the waters on which we sail.