Synopsis of OT XIX Sunday Homily on Mt 14: 22-33 (L-17)
Introduction: The readings for this week speak of God’s saving presence among His people and the need for trusting Faith in our loving and providing God Who always keeps us company, and the need of prayer in storms of life.
Scripture lessons: The first reading tells us of how Elijah the prophet who had defeated the 450 false priests of Baal with the help of just such a trusting faith in the power of Yahweh (and then had fled for his life), encountered the Lord God for help and strength and on Mt Horeb. In the second reading, Paul laments and mourns over the Jews who, having lost their faith in Yahweh and His prophets, had rejected their promised Messiah, Jesus. Paul tells us later (11: 7-24), that God’s plan called for the Jews to reject Jesus so that a few believers, like Paul, would be forced to carry the Good News outside Judaism and to evangelize the Gentiles. The Gospel episode occurred during an unexpected storm on the Sea of Galilee in the early morning hours. As Jesus approached the apostles, miraculously walking on water, he allayed their fears by telling them, “It is I.” The Gospel episode also explains how Peter lost his trusting faith in Jesus for a few seconds and consequently failed during his attempt to walk on water.
Life messages: 1) Call Jesus in the storms facing the Church and our lives. Let us approach Jesus with strong faith in his ability and availability to calm the storms in the life of the Church and in our lives. Church history shows us how Jesus saved his Church from the storms of persecution in the first three centuries, from the storms of heresies in the 5th and sixth centuries, from the storms of moral degradation and the Protestant reformation movement in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the storms of sex abuse scandals of the clergy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is the presence of Jesus which gives us peace even in the wildest storms of life: storms of sorrow, storms of doubt, tension and uncertainty, storms of anxiety and worries, storms of anger and despair, storms of temptations and storms in family relationship. But this demands a personal relationship with God, with Jesus, enhanced through prayer, meditative reading of Scripture and active participation in the Holy Mass.
2) We need to imitate the short prayer of sinking Peter: We are expected to pray to God every day with trusting faith for strengthening our personal relationship with Him and for acknowledging our dependence on Him. But when we have no time or mental energy for formal prayers, let us use the short prayers in the gospels like Peter’s prayer: “Lord, save me,” or the prayer of the mother of the possessed girl: “Lord, help me,” or the blind man’s prayer: “Son of David, have mercy on me,” or the sinner’s prayer: “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” We get plenty of time during our travels to say the short prayers like the “Our Father”, “Hail Mary” and “Glory be to.” We may begin every day offering all our day’s activities to God and asking for His grace to do His will and conclude every day before we go to sleep, by asking God’s Salomon S-lab Sense 2 Set Pack Review pardon and forgiveness for our sins. Keeping a Bible on our table will encourage us to read at least a few words of the Bible and thus listen to what God is telling us to do.
OT XIX [A] 1 Kg 19:9, 11-13; ;
Anecdote # 1: An old story about trustful faith: In the middle of a dark winter’s night in a small Midwest farming community, the two-story home of a young family caught fire. Quickly, parents and children followed their well-practiced emergency plan and made their way through the smoke-filled home out into the front yard. There the father quickly counted heads and realized that their 5-year-old son was not among them. Suddenly he heard a wail and looked up to see the boy at his bedroom window, crying and rubbing his eyes. Knowing the danger of reentering the house to rescue his son, the father called, “Jump, Son! I’ll catch you!” Between sobs, the boy responded to the voice he knew so well. “But, I can’t see you, Daddy!” The father answered with great assurance. “No, Son, you can’t see me, but I can see you! Jump!” At that, the boy jumped into the smoky darkness and found himself safely cradled in his father’s arms. Our Golden Goose Mid Star Mujer scripture today is about trusting – about having faith – about being able to discern the fact that our God is always with us, even in storms of life.