Deacon Larry

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Job 38: 1, 8-11; 2 Cor 5: 14-17; Mark 4: 35-41

Dc. Larry Brockman

Why do you suppose that the Apostles were afraid?  After all, Jesus, the Lord, was quietly sleeping besides them.  Imagine that- the Lord, who was both God and man, was sleeping besides them while a violent storm raged, and the boat filled with water.  But surely, no harm could or would come to them as long as Jesus was there. 

Why then were they afraid?  Well, the Lord’s words tell us why.  Because he said to them “Do you not yet have faith”?  So it was a lack of Faith.   

Now it seems to me there are two kinds of Faith:  There’s a guarded kind of faith- a faith expressed and seemingly practiced until- until it is challenged.  And then, well, there’s got to be a back up path, a way out to take, just in case- a way for us to take control.  And then there’s real faith- a complete, trusting faith, a faith that accepts that whatever happens, we will trust in God’s providence.  So a backup path is not necessary, and we leave the control in God’s hands.  That’s the kind of Faith Jesus wants us to have in him.   

You know, I would like to say that mine is always the real kind of faith.  But I have to be honest.  I am certainly not as faithful as the apostles who, although they thought they had Faith in Jesus as Lord, nevertheless woke him to make sure everything would be OK- a backup personal appeal, if you will 

And consider the case of a man like Job in the first reading- Job, who was righteous in the eye of the Lord.  That’s a claim that is hard for any of us sinners to make, that we are righteous in the eyes of the Lord.  But Job’s faith was less than perfect too- because the trials and tribulations he went through weakened his resolve, and introduced doubt.   

And so, as a human, I have a problem with real faith.  And if I were in the boat with Jesus right next to me, even after all the teaching I’ve had in my Faith, I would probably do the same thing- wake Jesus up.  Indeed, it is only human to fear the consequences of the storms that come up in our lives, and to doubt that God is with us in the middle of them- storms like the loss of a loved one, a job loss, and the economic disasters that we are facing today.   We feel we must do something instead of putting our ultimate trust in the Lord.  I’ll bet that most of you, too, would be in the same boat as me.   

Now once and a while, someone comes along who has genuine, almost perfect Faith- people like Padre Pio, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Francis of Paolo.  We can read about them; we can listen to their stories, and yet, their faith remains a mystery to us.  Because it involves a level of trust in God’s will, moment to moment, and a degree of self sacrifice that is very, very difficult for us to accept.  Consider this story about St Francis of Paolo.  Once a papal representative visited him in his monastery to talk about the rules St. Francis was proposing for his religious order.  The cardinal was explaining that the rules were unreasonably harsh, impossible to follow except for a weather-worn peasant like himself.  The saint walked over to the fireplace, picked up a handful of burning coals in his bare hands, held them out towards his visitor, and said:   “Yes, it is true your Monsignor: I am only an unlearned peasant, and if I were not, I would not be able to do this.”  The well-educated clergyman got the message.   

I think that St. Paul gives us the key to having the kind of faith that gives us such power when he says “The love of Christ impels us, once we have come to the conviction that one died for all”.  First, we have to come to the conviction that Jesus was both God and Man, and that He died for all of us, and that he rose from the dead and saved all of us.  Having that conviction is the beginning of Faith.  But the second part is just as important.   

Once we come to that conviction, and an understanding of what it means, namely, everlasting life and a relationship with the almighty God, our reaction should be to love God and show it by putting him first; so that the love of Christ, “Impels us” to live for Christ, not for ourselves.  If we can do that, allow ourselves to be impelled by the Love of Christ, then that love will cast out our fears, we will have genuine faith, and the peace that goes along with it. 

Certainly, because we are not perfect, we will sometimes fail, just as these apostles did.  But the important thing is that we return to our Faith and the Love of Christ each time we fail. 

This weekend we celebrate Fathers Day.  A day in which all of us thank our Fathers for the manifold gifts they have given us.  For many of us, it was our Fathers who passed on to us the gift of Faith.  Indeed, if we have a genuine faith, then our Fathers probably had a lot to do with it.  Because although we can learn from teachers and books and schools and all kinds of sources, what we should believe as part of our faith, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is our conviction.  To have conviction in our Faith on our hearts takes the influence of a good parent- like a good Father because children observe the faith of their father, and can see whether it is genuine or not.  And they can see whether the actions of their fathers are impelled by the love of Christ. And so today, God bless all those who are Ftaher figures who pass on their faith to their children. 

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 11:30 am and is filed under Holy Family Sunday Homilies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.