Saturday, January 31, 2004
3rd Week in Ordinary Time

1st Reading: 2S 12:1-7, 10-17
Gospel: Mk 4:35-41

One day when evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, "Let's go across to the other side." So they left the crowd and took him away in the boat he had been sitting in, and other boats set out with him. Then a storm gathered and it began to blow a gale. The waves spilled over into the boat so that it was soon filled with water. And Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion.

They woke him up and said, "Master, don't you care if we sink?" As Jesus awoke, he rebuked the wind and ordered the sea, "Quiet now! Be still!" The wind dropped and there was a great calm. Then Jesus said to them, "Why are you so frightened? Do you still have no faith?"

But they were terrified and they said to one another, "Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him!"

Commentary

IF you ask us today to say what the opposite of faith is, we would be inclined to say, Doubt. But in this passage (as in many other passages in the New Testament) it seems to be fear, or a certain kind of fear. See this contrast of fear and faith in the verse, "Why are you frightened? Do you still have no faith?"

Our natural instincts are our friends; they are our equipment for survival as individuals and as species. So this must be true of fear. But like all our instincts it can become neurotic and turn against us. Then it becomes a crippling force, preventing us from doing anything, good or bad. It can cripple us visibly and invisibly: if my knees are knocking and my face is pale, I am visibly in the grip of fear; but I am invisibly in its grip if I have easily put aside-or not even considered-challenges and openings that were lying there for me. I can be frightened and not look it.

That little boat crossing a storm-tossed lake is a symbol of our life. Many things tell us-and we tell one another-to be afraid. But "do we still have no faith?"

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