Mark 4:35 - 41
When I was about four, my parents took my little sister and I on a vacation in the mountains. We rented a cabin on the shore of a mountain lake. In the Rocky Mountains there are lakes which fill the valleys, and Swan Lake was long, deep, narrow. So one day my dad got us all into a rowboat and we went out on the water. He had planned to do some fishing and I guess the rest of us were just supposed to relax. All of a sudden a mild breeze became a gust of wind and before long the surface of the lake was getting choppy. My dad became very anxious and rowed us back to shore as quickly as he could. As we got out of the boat rain started to fall and the lake became very violent. Whenever I read this gospel passage I think of those moments, some of the earliest I can remember in my life.
With my dad’s hard rowing and my mother’s urging us back into the cabin, I felt, maybe for the first time, the idea that nature was not as friendly as you think.
Many years ago I had a patient, a young woman who had a very unusual cancer involving her face. She was deeply in love and planning to get married, and it looked as though the cancer might be curable with surgery, so an attempt was made. Unfortunately it wasn’t successful, and several months later the tumor had returned. She went to Mass General and Sloan Kettering to seek opinions, and ultimately chose to have a radical procedure that involved the removal of her eye and part of the skull. Afterwards several plastic surgery procedures were carried out. Somewhere during this time her boyfriend decided to break off the engagement. And the tumor came back. When I met her, the goal became making her last few weeks with as little pain as possible.
But you can imagine that her pain was not just in her mangled face. She had that kind of pain that’s deep in the soul, the kind that asks, “why me?” She had been religious once, but felt abandoned. She wanted nothing to do with her former church, and several times expressed the idea that if there was a God at all, he was certainly a cruel God. And I wish I could tell you that before she died she made her peace with God, but that wasn’t the case. I was notified by the police one afternoon that they had found her unresponsive and it appeared to be suicide.
Today we hear the apostles cry out, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” And sooner or later we will all be tempted to ask that question. And great faith will be demanded of us. Because as Jesus tells his disciples, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” The disciples had just seen Jesus do something only God could do -- control the wind and the sea. But according to Mark they had already witnessed many miracles, including the cure of a man possessed by a demon and the healing of a paralytic. And they had been listening to his teachings on the kingdom of heaven -- the idea expressed in many different parables, that God is the one who is in charge. When someone sews seeds, God gives them life; When a mustard seed is planted, God sees to it that it grows into the largest of shrubs.
Our Catholic religion has as its primary purpose the uniting of ourselves to God in a bond of love. Love cannot exist unless the ones doing the loving are free, free to say yes or no to the love offered. But if we are to accept God’s love, we need faith, we need to see that the storms in our lives are no match for God’s power. And that’s something that needs reinforcement, especially when it seems God is not listening.
God is always communicating with us. Sometimes he uses words, but most of the time, I think, he uses the events that shape our lives. But if we are to pick up on his message, we need to meet him half-way. And that’s very hard in our society, when there is so much noise, so much to distract us. You remember the story of Elijah, who went into a mountain cave, and experienced an earthquake, but God’s voice was not in the earthquake. Then there came a strong wind, then fire, and neither carried God’s voice. Once everything had quieted down, Elijah recognized the voice of God in a gentle whisper, a still small voice.
If we want to progress in our love affair with God, we can’t be talking all the time; we have to listen. That means sitting in silence, doing what the Blessed Mother did -- pondering things in our hearts. We need to remember the times in our lives that do show the hand of God, often something we don’t realize until much later. And then we can take comfort in knowing that God orders all things for good.
A long time ago, the writer of the 46th psalm put these words into God’s mouth: “Be still and know that I am God.” During this summer let us cultivate the stillness, let us remember that Jesus will quiet our storms in his good time. Let us have faith.
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