The calming of the storm and our lack of faith

Today’s Gospel reading gives us a glimpse of Divine power. This passage is from Mark 4:35-41 about the calming of the storm. There are two lessons to learn in this one passage, one is about the power of God and the other is about the faith or lack of faith of man.

“On that day, as evening drew on, [Jesus] said to [his disciples], “Let us cross to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. 38 Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher do you not care that we are perishing?”

39 He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be Still! The wind ceased and there was great calm. 40 Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith? 41 They were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who is this whom even the wind and sea obey?”

This Scriptural event only showed the weakness of the disciples of Jesus for until that time, they never really knew who their master was, that he was Divinity personified in Christ. But if you didn’t know, when Adam and Eve were in Paradise, they too could control the seas, the animals and birds. Alas, they lost it when they disobeyed God. Open your Bibles to Genesis 2: 26 in the Story of Creation.

“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.”

Look for the word “dominion” in your dictionary and you will read that it means, “ruling power, authority, or control.” In a way, our Lord Jesus was telling his apostles what man had lost when Adam and Eve were banished from Paradise, a Paradise that we shall soon regain by the ultimate sacrifice of our Lord Jesus in dying on the cross.

Notice also that very early in Bible history, when God created man, he did not use the “I” word, he said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” This manner of speaking teaches us that God is indeed, three beings in One, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which in later Scripture passages, our Lord Jesus would point out very clearly to this disciples, to preach the gospel in the name of The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 This scripture passage also tells us about our lack of faith. The disciples of Jesus were on board that boat with other boats when the squall struck. If only they believed that they were with the Lord and would always be safe, they wouldn’t have awakened him. But their lack of faith made them terrified with the storm, hence they woke up their Master, who rebuked the wind and calmed the seas, then rebuked his disciples for their lack of faith.

At the height of World War II when Europe was engulfed in the flames of war, pestilence and death, Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Pacelli a.k.a. Pope XII was asked by one of his aide, “Where God was in the midst of this gory war?” Pope XII then ushered his aide to the Papal chambers and right outside his bedroom door was a huge painting of the Calming of the Storm.

Then the Pope explained to his aide that whenever he thought that God had abandoned us in our darkest time, he always stood before that painting and reflected on its story so we can remember that divine promise that God will always be with us till the end of time. All we need is for us to put our trust in God. How true, when nature goes awry and the fury of the wind or storm strikes fear inside our hearts, then all we need to do is pray to our Lord Jesus that if he will not calm the raging storm, at least calm the chaos and fear that rages within our hearts.

The problem really boomerangs back to our lack of faith. I got this text message years ago but someone recently texted this again to me. It’s a story about a place that was stricken with a severe drought. They asked the priest to say the Holy Mass and pray for rain. The whole church was jampacked with the faithful, but only one little boy brought along with him an umbrella. This story may be fiction, but it teaches us volumes about our lack of faith. That little boy knew that when we pray to God, he will surely bless them with rain, so he came prepared, while the rest of the faithful were all skeptical that the rains would come.

God has a plan for all of us. Remember, even the hairs on your head have been counted, which we cannot even count. But it is up to us to surrender our lives to the will of God and he will do the rest for us. Like the little boy in that fictional story, all we need is to have a childlike faith and believe that God would provide for all our needs because God loves us all.