Wake Up, Lord

“Teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing?”  Do you ever feel like the apostles at this moment, in which God doesn’t seem to be doing anything? God doesn’t seem to be listening, He doesn’t seem to be reacting.  He doesn’t seem to be hearing your call.  He seems to be sleeping.  There’s a passage, maybe me, and maybe some of you fathers in the challenges that a father can face, might feel like this sometimes, like Peter feels.  There’s a Psalm, Psalm 44, where it says, “Rouse yourself, why do you sleep Our Lord, awake?  Do not cast us off forever.  Why do you hide your face?  Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?  Rise up, come to our help.  Wake up God.  Why are you sleeping?”  So that sense we hear the psalm and then the great psalms which are the prayers that God gives us.  So, He’s letting us know that we might be behind that way sometimes, to wake up, Lord do something.  Why are you letting this happen?  St. Augustine, talking about these storms in this passage says, “the episode at sea signifies the drama of the Christian life.  All of God’s children embark with Christ on a life that is full of dangerous storms, especially attacks from evil spirits, and temptations of the flesh.”  Because sometimes those storms are going on inside of us.  And St. John Chrysostom, also common in the same passage, says, “the wave pass the boat signifies the struggles of the Christian life, endangered by the wind and fierce waves.  God’s people are awakened by spiritual assaults and become aware of their helplessness.”  So, what it’s saying is that if we’re trying to follow Jesus, if we’re getting in the boat with Jesus, because He says follow Him, right?  This is what we can expect.  Won’t always be smooth sailing, sometimes they’ll be terrible storms and terrifying storms.  I wanted to share with you today, a meditation of a mystic, Maria Valtorta.  We’ve had a lot of her passages, and it’s two parts.  First of all, it’s a description of this passage, and then it is a reflection on it, a commentary.  So, for this first part if you want to, you can close your eyes so that you can put yourself more easily in the scene.  “This is what I saw, a sailing boat not excessively large, not very small.  A fishing boat on which five or six people can move comfortably as power in the water of the beautiful deep blue lake of Kanessa, the Sea of Galilee.  Jesus is sleeping in the stern. He is dressed in white as usual. He is resting His head on His left arm and under His arm and head He has placed His blue gray mantle, which has been folded many times.  He is sitting, not lying, on the bottom of the boat and His head is resting on the board that is at the very end of the stern.  He is sleeping peacefully.  He is tired, He is placid.  Peter is at the rudder.  Andrew is busy with the sails.  John and two others are sorting out the ropes and nets at the bottom of the boat as if they were preparing for a catch during the night.  I would say that the day is going to end because the sun is already setting in the West.  The sky begins to cloud over and the sun is hiding behind huge storm clouds, which have suddenly appeared from behind the top of a hill.  The wind blows them fast towards the lake.  The wind for the time being as high up in the lake is still quiet.  It is only becoming darker and its surface is no longer perfectly smooth.  There are no waves as yet, but the water is beginning to ruffle. Peter and Andrew watch the sky and the lake and are preparing to draw closer to the shore.  But the wind suddenly rages over the lake that in a few minute, surges foaming, the swelling waves crash one against the other.  They strike the little boat, lifting it up, lowering it down, tossing it in all directions, thus preventing all maneuvers of the rudder, as the wind prevents maneuvering the sail, which has to be lowered and Jesus is sleeping.  Neither the steps and excited voices of the disciples, neither howling wind, nor the waves pounding on the side of the boat and its brow awakened Him, His hair is blowing in the wind and drops of water reach Him.  But He is sleeping.  John runs from stern to stern and covers Him with His mantle.  The storm rages more and more furiously. The lake is as black as if ink had poured into it.  In a street by the foam of the waves.  The boat lets in water, and is driven farther and farther to the open sea by the wind.  The disciples are sweating in their efforts to maneuver the boat and bailing out the water which the waves pour in, but to no avail.  They are paddling in the water, which reaches up to their knees, and the boat is becoming heavier and heavier.  Peter loses his calm and patience.  He hands the rudder over to his brother, staggers towards Jesus and shakes Him vigorously.  Jesus wakes up and raises His head.  ‘Save us Master, we’re going down,’ Peter shouts to Him and he has to shout, to make himself heard.  Jesus stares at His disciples, looks at the others and at the lake.  Do you believe that I can save you?  ‘Quick master’ shouts Peter, while a real mountain of water moves fast from the center of the lake, towards the poor little boat.  It is so high and dreadful that it looks like a waterspout.  The disciples see it coming, kneel down and hang on to whatever they can, certain that it is the end.  Jesus gets up, He stands on the stern board, a white figure against the livid storm.  He stretches His arms out towards the billow, and says to the wind, ‘stop and be quiet’ and to the water, ‘calm down.’  I want it, and the billow dissolves into foam, which falls harmlessly with the last oar, which fades into a whisper, while the wind dies down, changing into a whistle and then a sigh.  And the sky becomes clear once again, over the appeased lake, while hope and faith fill the hearts of the disciples.  I cannot describe Jesus’ majesty.”  So that’s the description and then there’s a reflection.  “Why was I sleeping?”  That’s a good question. Right?   Why was Jesus sleeping?  “Did I perhaps not know that there was going to be a storm?  Yes, I knew, only I knew.  Why was I sleeping then?”  So, think about why.  Why was Jesus sleeping?  “The apostles were men. They were full of goodwill, but still very much men.  Man thinks he is always capable of everything.  When he is really capable of doing something, he is full of hardiness and attachment to his ability.  Peter, Andrew, James and John were good fishermen and consequently, they thought they were unexcelled in handling a boat.  As far as they were concerned, I was a great rabbi, but a mere nothing as a sailor. Thus, they thought I was unable to help them.  When on the boat to cross the sea of Galilee, they begged Me to sit down because I was not capable of doing anything else.  Also, their love for Me was behind their attitude, as they did not want Me to do any material work.  But their attachment to their own ability was greater than their love.”  So, like, Lord, we can take care of this, we’ll handle this, you just rest and don’t get in our way. “I did not impose Myself.  I do not impose Myself, except in exceptional cases.  I generally leave you free and wait.”  Maybe some of you fathers feel like this sometimes.  “On that day, tired as I was, and being requested to rest, that is to let them act.  Clever as they were, I went to sleep.  My sleep also included the ascertainment of how man is man and wants to do things by himself, without feeling that God asked but to help.  I saw in the spiritually deaf men, in those spiritually blind men, all the spiritually deaf and blind people, who throughout the centuries would ruin themselves, because they wanted to do it by themselves.  Although I was bent over their needs, waiting to be asked to help them.  When Peter shouted, save us, My bitterness dropped like a stone.  I am not man, I am the God man.  I do not behave as you do.  When someone rejects your advice, or your help, and you see him in trouble, even if you’re not so bad as to rejoice at it, you’re uncharitable enough to look at him disdainfully and  indifferently, without being moved by his shouts for help your attitude means, when I wanted to help you, you did not want me, well help yourself now.  But I am Jesus, I am the Savior and I save, I always save, as soon as I am asked to.  The poor man might object. In that case, why do you allow all these storms to break out?’  So, another good question.  Why, if you’re the Savior, why do you allow all these storms?   “If by my power, I should destroy evil, you would consider yourselves the authors of good, which in actual fact, is the gift of mine.  And you will not remember Me any longer, you would never remember Me.   My poor children, you are in need of sorrow, to remember that you have a Father.”  And so, this is, on this Father’s Day, Jesus, reminds us of our Divine Father.  “As the prodigal son remembered that he had a father when he was hungry, misfortunes convinced you of your nothingness, of your ignorance, which is the cause of so many errors of your wickedness, the cause of so much mourning and grief of your faults, the cause of the punishments, which you inflict upon yourselves.  Misfortunes also remind you, of your need for Me, of My power, and of My goodness.” That is what today’s Gospel teaches you, My poor children.  Call me, Jesus does not sleep, except when He is in anguish, because He sees that He is not loved by you.  Call me and I will come.  And so, this gospel is an opportunity to reflect on ourself, to see if there’s ways, areas in our own life in which we have excluded the Lord.  Some areas were open to Him, but some areas, we think, Lord, I’ll take care of this.  But also, it has a meaning maybe not just for us personally, but for us as a society.  Maybe you’re calling upon the Lord, with a lot of faith.  But what about our society?  We live in a society, which in so many ways, so clearly has rejected God, rejected Jesus, with so much pride, saying, we will take care of this, we have experts, we have technology, we have science, we will take care of this.  And so that’s the situation of the society we’re in.  Maybe the Lord has done that a lot of things happen to try to wake up our society, and not just ours, you know.  Peter’s boat, is often seen as an image of the Church.  And there’s this attitude also, in fact, the Church, even in the Church, can, the members of the Church, even the pastors of the Church, basically be saying, Lord, we’ll take care of this, we’ll handle this.  We don’t need your help.  And there’s terrible consequences when we do that.  But the good news of this gospel is that in an instant, Jesus can change everything.  In an instant, no storm stops in an instant like that.  But Jesus can do that.  We’re going through terrible storms in our world right now, even in our church.  But this gospel gives us hope, that when it’s the right time, Jesus in an instant, can change everything.  In the gospel Jesus says, “why are you terrified, do you not have yet have faith.”  And so, what He’s asking of us, and sometimes the terrifying storms that we’re going through, is faith, faith, not just for ourselves, but faith, for society, and faith for the Church.  And sometimes the Church looks like it’s about to be swamped.  To have faith in Jesus.  So, this gospel is an invitation to call on Jesus in the storms that we experience.  And this Mass right now, that we’re celebrating today is an opportunity to do that, to come to Jesus, in the midst of the storm, to take time and you all have done that you’ve taken the time. You’ve made the effort to come to Jesus, for yourself, for your loved ones, for our world and our Church, for our country.  And so, with Mary, let us pray, Jesus, we trust in You.  As the apostles were calling out, Lord save us, Jesus, we trust in You. Amen.