4th Sunday of the year
January 31st, 2010
“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
Mark 4:40
Jesus has rebuked the storm as he had rebuked the unclean spirit in the synagogue at Capernaum. Both the storm and the demonic powers are aspects of chaos. Jesus had been asleep during the storm – a manifestation of his utter confidence in God. Jesus said to the frightened disciples: “Why are you afraid?” This scene where the disciples are awake and in danger while the Master ‘sleeps’ reflects the experience of the Church after the Resurrection. Christians may feel that the Lord has no care for them, that he has abandoned them.
We are constantly exhorted throughout the Bible not to be afraid. Fear can paralyse and hold us back. This fear forced the disciples to remain locked away after the death of Jesus, until the Holy Spirit empowered them to preach the Gospel.
Some of us remain in the harbour: we tend to be land-locked by fear, and don’t sail out to the horizon with an unquenchable faith. With Christ on board, fear is never necessary or justified.
There is a power in acknowledging what alarms you. What do you fear?
Prayer
Prayer
Be with me today, Lord, and remind me that you are with me at all times to strengthen and comfort me.
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Just a Thought
Hope
John XXIII, referred to as the ‘caretaker Pope’, realising the widening gap between the Church and the world of his day, wrote: “An old world is disappearing. Another one is being formed, and with this I am trying to conceal some good seed or other that will have its springtime, even if it is somewhat delayed, and comes after I’m dead.”
Thomas Merton writes: “One must not give in to defeatism and despair: just as one must hope for life in a mortal illness which has been declared incurable.”
Even when dark clouds surround us, even when everything appears to be falling apart, we must continue to believe for a better future. Whatever the problem, there is a way forward.
So, my hope is in God alone because I believe in him; this is my faith. It is in him I put my faith and that faith, my belief in God’s love for me and all his creation, is the bedrock in which like an anchor, I put my hope. Together with that hope and faith is my love and fidelity in responding to that God in whom I live and move and have my being. In him I place my hope.
“Hold fast to the hope that lies before us. This we have as an anchor of the soul” (Heb 6:15-19).
