Lord, save us! We are perishing!

Gn 19,15-29; Ps 25; Mt 8,23-27
2 JULY

When one walks with the Lord, he must always think from history and not from an immediate feeling. History reveals to us that nothing is impossible to the Lord. In Egypt, our God has made ten great signs of his omnipotence. Heaven and earth prostrated in obedience and listening. Is there anything impossible for the Lord? Another truth. If the Lord calls for an end and begins his work, might this work be interrupted half way because he is incapable of bringing it to completion? Then the Lord would attest to not being the Lord. If God sends Moses to free his people, can the people be brought back to Egypt by Pharaoh? If this happened, God would reveal himself non God and the pharaoh superior to God. In faith the right way to think is this: what does the Lord still want to show of himself? What omnipotence of his he wants to reveal to us? Sacred Scripture is a perennial new revelation of both the Omnipotence and the eternal love with which God loves man. Moses told the Lord just this so that he decided to love the children of Israel in spite of their sin. If you make us die in the desert, the peoples will think you are a useless God.

With that, the Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved. They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it, sacrificing to it and crying out, ‘This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ I see how stiff-necked this people is,” continued the Lord to Moses. “Let me alone, then, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them. Then I will make of you a great nation.” But Moses implored the Lord, his God, saying, “Why, O Lord, should your wrath blaze up against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with such great power and with so strong a hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent he brought them out, that he might kill them in the mountains and exterminate them from the face of the earth’? Let your blazing wrath die down; relent in punishing your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, and how you swore to them by your own self, saying, ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky; and all this land that I promised, I will give your descendants as their perpetual heritage'” (Ex 32,7-13).

Jesus is on the cross. What will the Lord want to attest of his omnipotence and his love? He does not free Jesus from the cross to reveal to us the omnipotence of his grace. With it we can live every suffering, every pain, every abuse, deprivation, poverty and injustice. Jesus was also stripped of his garments and his body was hung from the wood. He raises it in the tomb to testify that his omnipotence is capable of transforming a mortal body, already in death, into a spiritual, glorious, incorruptible and immortal body. He is able to make flesh light like God is light. This is our wisdom in all our crosses: knowing that we do not yet know our God according to fullness of truth. He comes and in our life, through it, reveals his omnipotence of grace, truth, justice, holiness, mercy and love. After revelation, faith opens up to other new revelations and so the disciple of Jesus grows from faith to faith. He knows his God is with him. He sees it.

He got into a boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?”

The disciples are in the boat with Jesus. A strong wind rises. The sea is stirred. What does Christ Jesus want to reveal to them today? They wake him up and Jesus shows his Lordship over the wind and the waters. If they had not woke him up, they would have seen other even more powerful and strong signs. They would have learned that with Jesus even if the wind and the sea are in strong agitation, the boat is always unsinkable. This is faith.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints, make us disciples with the very pure faith in Christ Jesus.