Tuesday, Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s first reading, the prophet Amos asks, ‘The lion roars: who can help feeling afraid?’ We could modify that question, ‘The storm roars: who can help feeling afraid?’ In the gospel reading the disciples were certainly afraid as the storm roared on the Sea of Galilee. Some of these disciples had made their living on the Sea of Galilee and knew its moods well. Yet, on this occasion such was the violence of the storm that ‘the waves were breaking right over the boat’. The depth of their fear is evident in their urgent request to the sleeping Jesus, ‘Save us, Lord, we are going down?’ In the gospel of Mark the words of the disciples to Jesus seem more like a rebuke, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ In Matthew the words of the disciples sound more like a prayer for help. Perhaps we are hearing the prayer of Matthew’s church as the storms of hostility break upon the community. Whereas in Mark, Jesus calms the storm and then addresses the disciples, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’, in Matthew it is while the storm is howling, before he calms the storm, that Jesus addresses himself to his disciples, ‘Why are you so frightened, you men of little faith?’ Perhaps Matthew is reminding his church, and all of us, that the Lord speaks to us in the midst of the storms of life. It can be hard to hear his voice above the clamour that surrounds us, but he is always speaking a word to us. In Matthew, Jesus addresses his disciples as men of little faith rather than no faith. Perhaps we can identify more easily with that address. We are people of faith but in the midst of the storms of life our faith can weaken. We wonder if the Lord has gone asleep on us. Yet, in the words of one of the psalms, ‘he neither slumbers nor sleeps’. The Lord is always awake to us and if we are awake to him as the storms of life howl, all will be calm again, in the language of the gospel reading.