Nineteenth Sunday of the Year 1 Kings 19:11-13; Rom 9:1-5; Mt 14:22-33 (Year A)
“I will hear what the Lord God has to say, a voice that speaks of peace. His help is near for those who fear him, and his glory will dwell in our land.” Prayer, for the psalmist, was an exercise in listening, a listening that reaches beyond the cacophony of daily life to an inner silence. We want to fill that silence with our distractions and anxieties, and yet it is only in our surrender to that silence that we are able to hear a voice that speaks of peace.
We, like the psalmist, long to hear what the Lord God has to say. At times our listening seems futile, and especially in times of stress. We long for the peace of God’s presence, and yet our very stillness becomes a magnet to our worst fears and anxieties.
The prophet Elijah knew about fear and anxiety. After his confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, Elijah had been forced to flee to the wilderness from the wrath of a vengeful Queen Jezebel. In the loneliness of that experience, a faith once so strong in its affirmation of the one true God, had seemed to falter.
“Lord, I have had enough. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.”
We too, in our journey through life, will encounter the silences that accuse and tempt us to give up. We, like Elijah, will struggle against the tide. Eventually Elijah sought refuge in an empty cave on the heights of Mount Horeb. Here, at last, he encountered the Lord, but in the most unexpected way.
At Sinai God had revealed himself to Moses at the peak of a mountain shrouded in thunder, fire and earthquake. As Elijah looked out from his cave, the Lord was not in the mighty wind, nor in the earthquake, but in the gentle breeze that followed. Too often we look for God to reveal himself in life’s calamities, failing to realise that the peace of his presence is often to be found in a stillness at the heart of their clamour.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus found that peace as he parted from his disciples for the stillness of prayer. In the meantime those same disciples, having set out by boat, were overwhelmed by a storm. They wanted to believe that even there, at the heart of the storm, Jesus was still with them.
We want to believe, and like Peter getting out of the boat, we reach out to him from a storm of uncertainty. Like Peter we continue to sink, and finally, in that last surrender of faith, we feel his touch.
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