Father Donald Senior, CP

Aug. 13: 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

1 Kgs 19:9a, 11-13a; Ps 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Rom 9:1-5; Mt 14:22-33.

Some Christians today are very confident in speaking about God. They address the “Lord” at every turn. They affirm without hesitation that they know what God wants of them; and they speak unhesitatingly about God’s communication to them: “The Lord told me to do this …” or “God asked me to decide this way …”

You may know some people like this. I don’t mean to question their sincerity but this kind of confident God-talk is not very common in our Scriptures, as the readings for this Sunday illustrate.

While trusting in God’s abiding love and counting on the Lord’s mercy, most of the great characters of the Bible were modest about their encounters with God. The Bible, as it were, offsets the temptation to be too casual in speaking about God by reminding us of God’s mysterious and often elusive presence.

The first reading from the First Book of Kings, which recounts one of most famous incidents in the Bible, makes this point. The prophet Elijah, fleeing from the wrath of murderous Queen Jezebel, heads south to the Sinai desert. He is at his wit’s end and fears that God has abandoned him.

But the word of God comes to him and tells him to stand outside a cave on Mount Horeb and wait for the Lord to come. First, a fearsome wind tears the rocks apart, but the Lord was not in the wind. Then there is a terrible earthquake, but again God is not in the earthquake; and then a roaring fire, but God is not in the fire. Finally, unexpectedly, there is the “sound of sheer silence” and then Elijah realizes that God is here in this unanticipated, quiet manner.

The prophet wrapped his face in his mantle and went out to encounter this mysterious Lord. Rushing wind, earthquakes, fire — these might be Hollywood’s way to depict the arrival of God, but it’s not the Bible’s.

The dramatic Gospel story of Jesus’ walking on the water is the same vein. In the fourth watch of the night — the darkest moment of all — the disciples struggle against fierce waves on the Sea of Galilee. In the midst of that darkness, Jesus appears walking on the water.

The disciples are terrified and think it is a ghost but Jesus quells their fear: “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”

This point is driven home in Matthew’s version of the story where he writes that Peter asks if he, too, might walk on the water toward his master. He is allowed to do so but then panics as he feels the strength of the wind. He sinks into the waves, crying out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus reaches out and catches Peter, rescuing him from his fear. When they get into the boat, the rest of the disciples worship this mysterious Jesus: “Truly, you are the Son of God.”

Some of the great saints exemplify this kind of modesty about God. St. Teresa of Kolkata confided in her journal that she lived in continual doubt and anguish about God’s presence in her life, even as she gave herself in service to God’s poor. St. John of the Cross, the famed Carmelite mystic, spoke of the “dark night of the soul,” searching for the elusive God. Paul Daneo, the saint and founder of my own Passionist religious community, a great contemplative, confessed that he had not experienced any emotion about God for nearly 50 years.

For most of us there are times when we do sense God’s presence — in moments of joy and peace. At other times, when we are perplexed about our life or feel overwhelmed with some of our problems or despair about the state of our world, we can resonate with the realism of the Bible expressed in today’s readings. God is present but sometimes that presence may seem elusive not because God is uncaring but because we are human, and the beauty and power and abiding love of God is more than we can absorb.

We believe, Lord, help our unbelief.

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