Recently, I heard a compelling teaching from Bishop Robert Barron about Jesus calming the storm. He starts by explaining that in the scriptures, a boat always represents the Church – meaning the people that make up the Church, not the institution. Stormy waters are the difficulties the Church, meaning us, experience throughout our lives. One of the interpretations of the Church Fathers, as to why the disciples are so afraid, is that they have allowed the Christ in them to fall asleep, to be dormant. They are no longer spiritually alert.
Bishop Barron explains, “This is the danger in our contemporary secularism. It is a difficult stormy world. What have we done? We have forgotten about prayer; we have forgotten about the Mass, forgotten about the saints, about the sacraments, and then we wonder, ‘Why am I so afraid? Why is my life so chaotic?’ It is because you have allowed the Christ in you to fall asleep.” When the disciples wake Jesus up, he immediately calms the storm. Bishop Barron concludes, “So it goes in the spiritual order. When we get reconnected to Christ, when we rouse the inner Christ to attention, the storms calm.”
Father Gill has been keeping us up on the statistics of current religious affiliation. A new Gallup Poll surveyed religious life from 2000 to 2023. No affiliation with a church increased from 9% to 21%. Catholics who attended Mass monthly dropped from 45% to 33%. We could find complimentary statistics showing an increase in anxiety, depression, divorce, and suicide. Life may seem like it is harder today than years ago, but it isn’t. Life has always been hard, but when people had God in their lives, when they didn’t tuck Jesus away in some dormant inner space, they had his supernatural power available to them to calm their storms. Many of the decreasing religious and increasing despair statistics are owned by our own baptized Catholics who walked away from the Church as teens or adults. God remains serene; storms do not affect Him and if we, or those we love, choose to sail our boats alone, Jesus will allow it. He will wait quietly for us to rouse our sleeping Christ, so He can rebuke the wind, and say to our storm, “Quiet! Be still!” Only then can we find the peace we truly desire.
Scripture: Read Mark 4:37-42. What stands out?
Call to Action: You know people that are experiencing great hardships right now. Invite them to pray, to come back to the sacraments, to Mass, to Adoration, or to talk to a priest.
