Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time Year 2 2024 BVM
Ordinary Time • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 1 viewWe all face storms, smaller or larger, and we need to discern whether they are do to our sin, in which case we repent, even if the storm is the temporal consequence of a sin we already repented of, or to some purpose of God, perhaps the collective evil or a nation or group, through which God wants to direct us to teach us trust. While he may send us a messenger to explain, usually this means that our response must be prayer, a lot of prayer, so we can discern how to trust and what our role is in the middle of the storm.
Notes
Transcript
Title
Title
Storms and Repentance
Outline
Outline
Storms can break upon us
Storms can break upon us
It may be a sickness, sudden or slow
It may be turmoil in our lives
It may be turmoil in our families, spiritual family, or nation - even our church
We may be a bit player, not in any way the main reason, but let us be clear: God is aware of all involved and, if we allow it, it will be for our good.
Sometimes God gives a warning
Sometimes God gives a warning
The reason is so that we may know how to respond, so the storm may work its good in us.
That is the story of Nathan’s message to David, a parable, not an immediate denunciation. David had committed adultery or rape (and even before that he had multiplied wives) and to cover it up he had had a most honorable soldier murdered in what seemed like only an act of heroism. And because the soldier was a foreigner no family smelled a rat. It is 10 months or a bit more later when Nathan comes to the unsuspecting David, inspires in him anger at the stealing of a female sheep, and then says, “You are the man.”
David repents: “I have sinned against the LORD.” And the LORD forgives David - he would not die (the appropriate penalty for adultery) - but there were consequences: the child of the adultery or rape would die, his wives would be raped in public by “your neighbor,” and, although not said by Nathan, several of his oldest sons would die (the eldest due to raping his half sister).
David’s repenting will turn into deep mourning when the child gets ill, and further morning when each of his sons dies (not just for the death, but because he could see he was the cause). The storms would come, but because David was deeply pious the storms would purify him rather than destroy him.
Sometimes we do not know the reason
Sometimes we do not know the reason
Although Jesus “explained everything” to his disciples privately, sometimes it was “show and tell.” And yet the stilling of the storm is also private in that nothing is seen by or said to the “other boats” who were with him.
The disciples, several of them experienced boatmen, thought of this as a routine crossing with Jesus asleep for he would need to teach the next day.
The lailaps suddenly descending upon the lake would have been a known phenomenon to the boatmen, but it was also feared. Waves break over the boat, it is filling faster than they can bail, so they warn the Teacher , “How can you sleep? Don’t you care that we are all going down?”
He wakes, looks towards the sea and says to it, “Be quiet, shut up.” The wind dies down; the sea becomes calm. Then he speaks to the shocked disciples, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” Their terror, he says, is because they did not trust, implying “trust him, trust his presence.” He was teaching them to say, “Jesus, I trust in you,” as their mantra in disaster.
They get it enough to know he was more than a teacher, even than a prophet, but do not focus on his being and presence, but on his power: “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” They were learning, but had a ways to go.
Sisters, we recognize ourselves here
Sisters, we recognize ourselves here
Sometimes we recognize that the storms in our lives, be they small or great, are the results of our sins. We may need someone to bring this truth out to us; we may recognize it ourselves. There is a temporal suffering we may experience even though forgiven, a type of purgatory on earth, that will deepen our repentance (as it did for David) and unbend us from that type of sin or perhaps eradicate it in our family or community. We do not hear of David committing adultery again or of infighting in the royal family after David’s generation.
But sometimes the storms are not connected with our sin. It may be someone else’s sin, or the collective sin or a group or nation, which has helping us in grow in trust as possible benefit. Or it may be that Jesus is trying to help us forward in trusting him.
We discern this in prayer, and for those in the other boats it may have taken a lot of prayer, if they knew to pray.
I thought of Pope John Paul II as I read these passages. His biographer often portrays him as spending long hours before the Blessed Sacrament, sometimes on his face. There he discerned God’s will, there he found courage in the midst of the trials of Nazi or Soviet cruelty and oppression - of even of dealing with the Roman Curia. There he dealt with his sins, discerned if something was related to sin, and found the courage of trust as he realize a choice or an event was God’s will.
That is what we need to face our storms: a talk with Jesus: “Jesus, I trust in you. Tell me if or how I should be repenting or if I should be simply trusting. Whatever happens, I trust in you.”