June 20, 2021: 12th Sunday B
How many of us are weary of hurricane season? Here we are only 20 days into the hurricane season, and we already had the first tropical event for Louisiana. Ten months ago, just a couple of days prior to the landfall of Hurricane Laura in Cameron Parish, a parishioner made her final inspection of her family camp located on Holly Beach before returning home. An inspiration came to her mind right as she was ready to drive away, that she should bless the whole camp with holy water. She went around the camp praying and blessing the camp, asking the Blessed Mother to protect the place. The area was no stranger to hurricane devastation; in 2005, Hurricane Rita wiped away all the camps on Holly Beach. A non-believer may have questioned, ‘What good are drops of blessed water against a Category-4 hurricane’? However, for the parishioner the holy water was a sign of her faith in Jesus who calmed the storm in the Sea of Galilee and her trust in Jesus who said that faith the size of a mustard seed can move a mountain.
The experience of the disciples in a small boat in the midst of an unexpected storm resonates with us. Sudden storms in our lives come in all varieties, and they toss us into a sea of chaos, doubt, and anxiety. Oftentimes we feel as if Jesus is sleeping. We feel like asking God, “Don’t you care? Why aren’t you doing something? Don’t you love me?” St. Therese of Lisieux wrote about such an experience in her journal, “My soul was like a fragile boat tossing without a pilot in a stormy sea. I knew that Jesus was there, asleep in my boat, but the night was too black for me to see Him. All was darkness. … Like Jesus during His agony in the Garden, I felt myself abandoned and there was no help for me on earth or in heaven. God had abandoned me (Story of a Soul, 61).”
If Jesus seems to be asleep to us, can we believe that he may be active in ways that we are not aware? St. Paul wrote that we are a new creation in Christ; the old things of the past have passed with Jesus’ death and resurrection, and we are given a new life in Christ. Each storm of life is an opportunity for us to grow into a more mature faith. Each challenge pushes us to the brink of desperation to wake Jesus who seems to be asleep. As we cry out to him, we realize that we have been asleep also; we have forgotten who Jesus is and have forgotten all the times in the past when we recognized and relied on our faith in Jesus who sustains us through every encounter in life. As someone wrote, “Fear knocked on the door but when Faith opened the door, there was nobody there.”
Recently, I went to visit a former parishioner who was dying of cancer. It was a cool morning outside, and we sat down with a cup of coffee rocking in our chairs listening to the birds chirping. She has been through many storms in her life--losing a number of family members whom she loved dearly and battling recurring cancer the past few years. She smiled at me and said, “Father, I’m ready; I’m ready to be with my parents.” Friends and family urged her to seek new treatments and seek out a priest or a nun with a gift of healing, yet she has calmly told them that it was time for them to let her go. Before I arrived in the morning she said she was listening to a traditional French Marian hymn, “I will see her one day In heaven, in my garden. Yes, I will see Mary, My joy and my love In the sky… This beautiful virgin… Soon I will be beside her… To Tell her of my love… I will go near her throne... To receive my crown, In eternal rest… Upon my mother's heart, Rest without return…” Her heart was stilled; her hope was inflamed to see Jesus, the Blessed Mother, and her deceased family. Not even the storm of death shook her inmost conviction that the love of Christ would carry her to the other shore. Her ultimate healing will come through death, not the healing her family wants , but the healing in which she trusts.
Our journey of life will be filled with storms. In those moments, our sense of Jesus’ love and presence will be drowned out by a multiplicity of fearful voices. At such times, we need to remember who Jesus is, the one who has power over all things. We need our faithfulness to prayer, to seek his presence in the Scriptures, and the Sacraments. For Jesus will awake in us the faith to trust in God’s will and his abiding presence.
Calm me Lord as You calmed the storm;
Still me Lord, keep me from harm,
Let all the tumult within me cease,
Enfold me Lord, in Your peace.
