What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?

1 JULY (Mt 8, 23-27)

St. Paul says that faith comes from hearing the Word of the Lord: “Ergo fides ex auditu, auditus autem per verbum Christi (So then faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of Christ)”. Here is the truth of his complete argumentation: “But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring (the) good news!” But not everyone has heeded the good news; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what was heard from us?” Thus faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ” (Rm 10,14-17). However, this is only one of his many words on the birth of the faith. In the same letter to the Romans, that is how he completes his truth: “For I will not dare to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to lead the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit (of God), so that from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum I have finished preaching the gospel of Christ” (Rm 15,18-19).

Instead, for St. John faith comes from hearing, from vision, from touch and from contemplation: “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life – for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us – what we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing this so that our joy may be complete” (1Jn 1,1-4). To this truth we must add what he writes at the end of his Gospel: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of (his) disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name” (Jn 20,30-31).Faith comes by the word accompanied by the sign. Word and sign must be given by the “preacher” of the mystery of Jesus the Lord. Word and sign must be intimately connected, never disjointed and never separated.

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?”

Today, the poverty of our faith is given by its reduction to a simple word, and furthermore incomplete, heretical, in part and purged of many essential truths. Jesus is in the boat. He is sleeping. He does not raise any faith in the disciples. The hurricane, the storm come, the sea is agitated, they wake him up. He commands the sea and the wind. Everything becomes instantly a great calm. The disciples begin to wonder. Faith begins to be born in their hearts. It comes from hearing and vision, from the words and works intimately related placed in the history of the Master. They listen, see and question themselves.

We are wrong when we think that faith comes by hearing only. This way, we reduce the disciple of Jesus to a disc, a bronze, a tinkling cymbal. It is urgent that we give to the process of the faith its complexity, universality and globality. In this complexity, its “preacher” is wholly committed. He must be the first and irreplaceable sign of faith. His whole person must be this sign along with his word. His whole body must speak of faith in the same way that the body of Christ spoke and revealed his truth. The word alone is not enough.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us true “preachers” of faith.