Spirituality of the Readings

Feelings

Trust in the Lord

This Sunday we will hear the wonderful story of Jesus walking on water. This miraculous event is mainly what we will remember, together with Peter sinking into the water when he tried the same thing. But there is another very interesting spiritual dimension that I would like to suggest.

What do you think was going on in Jesus’ own heart and soul during these events?

Remember the Gospel from last Sunday? Jesus did preach to the multitude and miraculously feed them, but he had wanted to be by himself to tend to his grief. He had just been told of the death of John the Baptist and it hit him hard. He had gotten into a boat and had rowed to what he thought would be a deserted place. But the crowd got there first and instead of quiet time for prayer and grief, Jesus had hour after hour of healing and curing.

Then comes the story for this Sunday. Jesus finally sends the crowd away. But besides that, he does one other thing that is very telling: he “made the disciples get into a boat and precede him to the other side” (Matthew 14:22). He still wants to be alone. He wants to process the death of John the Baptist. He goes up on the mountainside to pray.

It is by now evening, Matthew tells us, and Jesus prays into the night, even with gusty wind coming up. I wonder what his prayer was like?

He had studied the scriptures since his youth. Is it too fanciful to think that the story in our First Reading came into his mind? There the prophet Elijah too was up on a mountain-side, and there too, a heavy wind came up. The Lord was not in the wind, we are told in the reading. Nor in the earthquake that followed. Nor in the fire that came next. The Lord God was in the “tiny whispering sound” that followed. A better translation is “a still, small voice.”

This his how God speaks most often. In the quiet moment of grace, in the gentle assurance that we are not alone even in the face of tragedy, in the joy of knowing that love lives.

Sometimes the voice of God whispers so softly that you or I do not hear it.

But Jesus on the mountaintop heard. His great trust in his Abba ( = daddy, much loved parent) opened his ears. Perhaps Abba assured him that a human being has to rely on God even against the evidence, even when it seems that tragedy has the upper hand. This is not a blind trust, but a quiet memory of God’s faithful love even when events like death seem to contradict it. It appears to be counter-intuitive. Does death support belief in God any more than water supports human footsteps?

But Jesus does walk on water. Peter loses hope and starts to sink. Let this lesson be ours as we worship this Sunday. We only start to sink when we lose our trust in the source of hope and love and promise. Listen. Remember.

John Foley, SJ

**From Saint Louis University