[Catholic Caucus] The Sacred Page: Master Over the Sea: The Readings for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I’ve always had a bit of apprehension swimming in large bodies for water, like lakes or oceans. Especially if the water is dark and cold. I grew up in Hawaii, where there are many almost crystal-clear bays and the water is generally around eighty degrees, but even there, especially in the winter, the surf could rise and be extremely threatening. Finding out I spent half my life in the Aloha state, people ask me why I never surfed, but the reason is it is flat-out dangerous. A person can get seriously hurt surfing, and those who lived there knew it firsthand.

The ancient Israelites were not a seafaring people, and their apprehension about the water is reflected in the Scriptures. For example, we find out that in heaven, there will be no more sea (Rev 21:1). That’s an Israelite heaven, not a Polynesian one, for sure! Be that as it may, the sea often symbolizes in Scripture the forces of evil and chaos that threaten God’s people and challenge God’s sovereignty over the cosmos. In today’s readings, Jesus exercises absolute command of the sea and the sky, the waves and the wind. This reveals Jesus as God himself, the creator, who can be trusted to save us.

1The Lord addressed Job out of the storm and said: 8Who shut within doors the sea, when it burst forth from the womb; 9when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling bands? 10When I set limits for it and fastened the bar of its door, 11and said: Thus far shall you come but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stilled!

The Book of Job is seldom read on a Lord’s Day or major feast—only in Year B on the 5th and 12th Sundays of Ordinary Time—so I’ll take this opportunity to say a little about the book.

The Book of Job consists of a prologue, and epilogue in the voice of a narrator, and between these we have three cycles of dialogue between Job and his three “frenemies,” (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar), a long soliloquy by Job, a soliloquy by a younger friend Elihu, and finally a lengthy interrogation of Job by God. it was probably written originally as a kind of ancient Near Eastern theater piece or play, similar to the oldest of the Greek tragedies.

The plot of Job is well known. Job is an old and wise man, a kind of ancient clan chieftain or sheikh, known far and wide for his righteousness. Satan persuades God to allow him (Satan) to afflict Job and test his faith. God consents, and Satan destroys Job’s property and family, even plaguing him with skin sores. Job laments bitterly but refuses to curse God or give up on his relationship with God. job’s friends are convinced the calamities are due to Job’s secret sin, but Job maintains his innocence. In the finale of the book, God appears in a theophany and engages Job in a dialogue, challenging him with questions along the line of, “Where were you when I founded the earth?” (Job 38—42).

God’s challenges to Job concerning Job’s lack of knowledge or control over all the aspects of the universe for which God is responsible appear, on initial reading, to be a “shock and awe” strategy on God’s part, to overpower Job rather than to actually address his questions concerning why he was made to suffer so much evil. However, on further reflection, God’s challenges to Job do constitute an answer to Job’s questioning of God: God is pointing out that, in order to adequately assess whether God is justified in his providential guidance of any particular event, Job would have to be a much different being—a being like God himself, able to comprehend (and guide) all the factors that interact and must be taken into account as cosmic history moves forward. While not addressing Job’s particular case, God is implying that there are factors beyond Job’s comprehension that provide the rationale for innocent suffering. Whether the reader is satisfied with this response depends on whether the reader trusts or distrusts God to be speaking truthfully on this subject. Job, for his part, adopts the posture of trust.

Our First Reading comes from the beginning of these divine speeches to Job. It emphasizes that God, and God alone, is capable of taming the sea, which to this day poses a threat to humanity that we cannot entirely neutralize (as we are reminded every hurricane season). Control of these natural forces is clearly something divine, not human.

They who sailed the sea in ships,
trading on the deep waters,
These saw the works of the LORD
and his wonders in the abyss.
R. Give thanks to the Lord, his love is everlasting.

His command raised up a storm wind
which tossed its waves on high.
They mounted up to heaven; they sank to the depths;
their hearts melted away in their plight.
R. Give thanks to the Lord, his love is everlasting.

They cried to the LORD in their distress;
from their straits he rescued them,
He hushed the storm to a gentle breeze,
and the billows of the sea were stilled.
R. Give thanks to the Lord, his love is everlasting.

They rejoiced that they were calmed,
and he brought them to their desired haven.
Let them give thanks to the LORD for his kindness
and his wondrous deeds to the children of men.
R. Give thanks to the Lord, his love is everlasting.

Psalm 107 is an important and strategically placed psalm. It begins Book V of the Psalter, which reflects the mood of the restoration of Judah after the Babylonian exile. Book III (Pss 73-89) reflects on the destruction of the Kingdom of David (see especially the end of Ps 89), and Book IV (Pss 90-106) can be read as a meditation on the exile, which ends in Psalm 106 with a prayer for the restoration of Israel from all the places from which they have been scattered. Psalm 107, which is a composite todah or Thanksgiving psalm, begins by thanking God for bringing his people back from exile ((vv. 2-3). It then explores different forms of distress from which God rescues his people, including the dangers of the sea, as we see in the selection for this Mass. This psalm prepares for the Gospel reading, as it attributes to God himself the power to still storms:

He hushed the storm to a gentle breeze,
and the billows of the sea were stilled.

In the context of Psalm 107, the episode of being saved from the sea is one of several particularizations of God’s saving of his people out of the greatest trauma they had experienced: the Babylonian exile. The storm at sea can also be seen as a type of the threats to the survival of God’s people that mount up in history, from which God will save them.

[Brothers and sisters:] 14The love of Christ impels us, once we have come to the conviction that one died for all; therefore, all have died. 15He indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

16Consequently, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh; even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer. 17So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.

Our Second Reading continues to move semi-continuously through 2 Corinthians. This epistle is one of Paul’s most somber, and it is clear from reading it that the circumstances of his life and ministry at the time of writing had involved intense external as well as internal suffering, and apparent reverses. However, the depths of his suffering drove Paul deeper into his relationship with Christ, producing some of his most profound and consoling reflections on the life of Christian discipleship. The key line from today’s reading is this: “He indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him.” this is indeed a radical truth, but how many Christians truly live this reality? Despite all we have been taught and the sacraments we have received, we seem to inevitably turn back to living for ourselves. Yet the Christian life is radically unsatisfying if lived for one’s own interests. Setting aside personal goals, desires, and satisfactions, and learning to seek the will of Christ in both the short and long term involves a radical conversion and the entrance into a new world, where all things take on a different light, hue, and perspective. This is the beginning of the new creation, which we experience now by faith and sign, but will see directly one day. So, Paul says, “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” The Greek is more abrupt. Literally: “Thus, if someone in Christ, a new creation!” Which could be: “If someone [is] in Christ, [he is] a new creation,” or: “If someone [is] in Christ, [there is] a new creation.” I think the second option is intriguing: the one who is in Christ begins to experience reality in a radically different way: for him, the creation becomes renewed.

35On that day, as evening drew on, Jesus said to his disciples: “Let us cross to the other side.” 36Leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them in the boat just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. 38Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!” The wind ceased and there was great calm. 40Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” 41They were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?

The major point of our Gospel is the divinity of Christ. Our earlier readings have prepared us to see this: both the passage from Job and Psalm 107 attribute to God the power to calm or control the wind and the waves. Thus, we see Jesus exercising a kind of power that the Scriptures themselves directly attribute to the God of Israel.

Since Mark writes primarily to a Gentile audience, we should also try to hear this Gospel through the ears of an ancient Greco-Roman pagan. For them, the weather and the sea were gods, or the domains of the gods, so Zeus/Jupiter was the storm god and Poseidon/Neptune was the sea god. from a pagan perspective, Jesus is also demonstrating here his mastery over the chief gods of the ancient pantheon.

From ancient times, this Gospel has been understood also as a parable of the Church, for good reason. Peter’s fishing boat often quite literally held the entire Church at this stage in its development: Jesus and is disciples. In this episode, “the bark of Peter” is being dashed to pieces in the forces of historical evil and chaos, recalling the dark associations of the sea in Hebrew culture. In the midst of these storms, it often seems that Jesus is asleep, in other words, that God is absent and has forgotten the fate of his people.

The temptation in these times is to think that Jesus doesn’t care, tat God’s love for his people has ceased: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” that is a cry that often arises even in our own day as Christians globally struggle under various crises: some crushed and intimidated by militant Islam, others being suffocated under Marxist regimes, still others hounded out of public life and forced into the corners of society by sexual leftists and gender ideologists who want to obliterate Christian culture with a purple tsunami of sensualism. As the prospects for evangelization and a conversion of culture seems ever more remote, and hostility to Christ and his Church growing in all parts of the world, the individual Christian can be tempted to despair of God’s care: “Lord, do you not care?”

The answer of today’s Gospel is the divinity of Christ. Jesus is God. even the natural elements, the matter and energy of this cosmos, must follow his direction. If he allows his Church to suffer buffets and beatings in the storm of history, it is for a purpose, perhaps that his disciples may come to better realize who he is. The storms and tempests that seem so threatening and invincible in the moment can actually, at any time, be vanquished by a word from him.

“Do you not yet have faith?” This is the question that the Gospel poses to each one of us at this Mass. Do we have faith that Jesus is God, that he is the creator, that, all appearances to the contrary, he is the Lord of the cosmos and of human history? The disciples were given a great privilege to see the raw power of Christ demonstrated to their five senses. At times in history, others have been given a similar privilege. But for the most of us, Jesus wills that our trust in his divinity remains an act of faith, nonetheless inspired and prompted by the testimonies of the Apostles (as recorded in this Gospel) and other visionaries and recipients of miracles through history. For most us, Jesus leaves us a testimony of his power sufficient for belief, but not so strong as to force belief, so that the act of faith that opens up the possibility of a relationship with him may be freely made. The readings call us to make that act of faith and renew that relationship today.

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Please join Cardinal Burke’s novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe for ‘crises of our age’ (Started March 12—Never too late to join!)

Let us pray.

O Virgin Mother of God, we fly to your protection and beg your intercession against the darkness and sin which ever more envelop the world and menace the Church. Your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, gave you to us as our mother as He died on the Cross for our salvation. So too, in 1531, when darkness and sin beset us, He sent you, as Our Lady of Guadalupe, on Tepeyac to lead us to Him Who alone is our light and our salvation.

Through your apparitions on Tepeyac and your abiding presence with us on the miraculous mantle of your messenger, Saint Juan Diego, millions of souls converted to faith in your Divine Son. Through this novena and our consecration to you, we humbly implore your intercession for our daily conversion of life to Him and the conversion of millions more who do not yet believe in Him. In our homes and in our nation, lead us to Him Who alone wins the victory over sin and darkness in us and in the world.

Unite our hearts to your Immaculate Heart so that they may find their true and lasting home in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Ever guide us along the pilgrimage of life to our eternal home with Him. So may our hearts, one with yours, always trust in God's promise of salvation, in His never-failing mercy toward all who turn to Him with a humble and contrite heart. Through this novena and our consecration to you, O Virgin of Guadalupe, lead all souls in America and throughout the world to your Divine Son in Whose name we pray. Amen.

June is the month of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus:

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
(Matthew 11:28-30)

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