Lord, save me!

By F. Luis Casasús, General Superior of Idente missionaries
Commentary on the Sunday Gospel of 13-8-2017, Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (1st book of Kings 19:9a.11-13a; Letter to the Romans 9:1-5; Saint Matthew 14:22-33)

Three years ago, Pope Francis reflected on today’s Gospel text:

The faithful and immediate response to the call of the Lord always does extraordinary things. Jesus himself would say that we are capable of doing miracles with our faith, faith in Him, faith in His word, faith in His voice! Instead, Peter begins to sink in the moment in which he looks away from Jesus and is swept by the adversities that surround him. But the Lord is always there, and when Peter calls on Him, Jesus saves him from danger.

 Today’s readings challenge us to examine what are our darkness and interior storms (not just St. Peter’s), how do we react in those moments and what is the response of God to our prayer when we call on Him.

– When people do not respond like we were hoping, we usually do not come back with more grace and more humility. We get stubborn, and we come back with more truth and more authority.

– I do not always react in my mind very graciously when I am corrected. I am not above correction, though. I must remain humble and evaluate what is the truth in it, and I must admit that because God will resist me if I am proud but only give me grace if I humble myself before Him and my friends: God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6).

– When something bad happens to good people, how do you react?

– Even closer, when you and I pass into a serious and trying event, whether it is of health, or emotionally challenging, a failure in a project, how do we react? Does our faith hold? Or do we crumble, in many different ways: anger, discouragement, living a double-life…

– How about the many forms of persecution, slander or betrayals you encounter in your religious or family life?

– Do I attempt to seek out one who has offended me in order to offer forgiveness, or do I hold myself back, making him come to me?

– How do we react in response to the death of a loved one? Do we give up God?

– How do you see the people who interrupt your schedule?  Do you see them as a nuisance or as the reason for your life and mission?

– What burdens, pressures, hardships and temptations am I under? What sin am I struggling with?

– In the heat of trials Peter says our faith can be refined and purified like gold — if we accept them and look to learn about ourselves (1 Peter 1:7). How do I react to criticism? When someone disappoints me? When my body is in pain?

– In moments of difficulties, how do I react? How is the presence of the Most Holy Trinity integrated in me? What place does personal prayer and dialogue with God have in me in those moments?

– What do we ask God in a dark night, in purification? A miracle, that he frees us from this? A greater faith? In which attitudes am I similar to Peter?

St. Therese of Lisieux said once: How do I react when in my mind’s eye, I see the defects of someone who does not attract me? I remind myself of all that person’s good qualities, all her good intentions.

(Are you going to tell me that there are people with no good qualities at all?…This would mean that God has abandoned them or can no longer sustain them in such a difficult condition).

All these apparently simple questions are important reflection points and should assist us in clarifying our Dominant Defect. The mere fact of being able to pinpoint it is a grace and the beginning of my spiritual liberation from the main difficulty I am struggling with.

Faith is challenged not only in adverse circumstances but most of all when we are tested in our love for God and for others. How many of us can be like St Paul who was willing even to sacrifice his security and life for their loved ones? Here is a good testimony that I just witnessed few days ago:

Last week I met a lady whose brother became involved in drug addiction when both of them were younger. After a few months he disappeared. She spent two years seeking him in the most horrible and dangerous places of the town. She prayed every day for her brother and one day, when she came out of the subway, she met a dirty and emaciated homeless, with a long beard shouting: I’m your brother, I’m your brother. In her own words: This has been the response of God to my prayers. I fully agree.

She managed to take him to a rehabilitation center and, after long months of ups and downs, he made a complete recovery, and he is now successfully engaged in helping in rehabilitation and prevention programs for teenagers and young adults. (Please, note the three underlined words in the above paragraph…).

We don’t really understand who he is or the power He has until we see Him in action. This is what Peter meant when he said: Though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed (1 Pe 1:6-7).

Did you know that an eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks? The eagle will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it.

The eagle does not escape the storm. It simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm. When the storms of life come upon us we can rise above them by setting our minds, our eyes toward God.

We are proud and not used to relying on God but our own strength or in our experience, therefore we suffer an inability to let go and let God take over. For this reason, sometimes, God allows us to suffer, not to punish us but to help us recognize that we are not so mighty after all. God allows us to experience failures, frustrations and impotence. This is an essential step in each and very purification. These are valuable moments for they make us reach out in trust and surrender to Providence. It is in our weakness that we find strength in the saving grace of God.

Prayer cannot be a last resort in resolving situations but it must permeate all our activities in life as an act of offering our small achievements, our fears and our weaknesses. This is unitive prayer, continuous prayer, state of prayer. God will choose to manifest Himself in apparently ordinary moments; we have to be alert. Elijah did not experience God in the mighty wind or an earthquake or a fire but in the gentle breeze. The disciples too did not experience Christ in the storm but only when Jesus got into the boat and the wind had dropped. He is always present, silent or expressive.

In the first and the second readings, the prophet Elijah and Saint Peter are presented as teachers in the task of experiencing God in prayer:

When his enemies were going after his life, Elijah went outside and stood on the mountain before the Lord. When we are at the mountain we can see everything in life in perspective. We are not dazzled by the heavy wind, the earthquake and the fire, representing the power of this world and the things in which we trust or we are afraid of. He needed to feel God’s presence in the breeze before he found faith, paying attention to the ordinary events which represent a sign, a message of God. Instead of looking only at our problems, we are called to focus our eyes on the power and strength of Jesus: this is something we have already experienced in many forms, for instance in being forgiven. We know that after a storm, we will be able to feel His presence again.

Before we can grow from faith to adoration, which is intimacy and union with Him, we must acknowledge our helplessness, like Peter who cried out to Jesus: Save me, O Lord. Unless we recognize we need help, God will not intervene in our lives. Without humility and a ready acknowledgement of our powerlessness, God cannot reach out to us with His grace, we can surrender our lives at the divine plan of God; and in adoration for Jesus as we move from faith in Him to worship and union with Him just as in the case of the disciples who bowed down before him and said: Truly, you are the Son of God.

In good times, it seems that nothing will disturb our peace; but when tragedy or misfortune strikes, our faith might not be strong enough to see us through. If we are not prepared, we might even lose our faith. Without a personal knowledge and continuous experience of Christ, we would not be able to accept the risks, as Peter did, in walking on the waters of life. Truly, a mature believer has this immoveable foundation that God is watching us through the storms. We will not think He is a ghost. Only a faith of this caliber can withstand the good and bad times of life and hear Him in our storms saying: Courage. It is I. Do not be afraid!

This is ecstasy. Following the example of Elijah, let us today hid our face (our apparent personality) in the cloak and go and stand out of our dark cave.