A MESSAGE FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY
We certainly live in a troubled world. The Church has been a disaster since Vatican 2; our country sometimes seems to be almost on the brink of civil war; if we turn on the news, all we hear is people shouting at each other—where are we to look if we just want to find some tranquility? We can, of course, just shut ourselves up in our homes and just watch Turner Classic Movies, but in all truth, this is not who most of us are—we’re social animals, and are supposed to take comfort from the ties we have with our fellow man.
And meanwhile, as we bob up and down in this endless storm of hatred, bickering and godlessness, where, we often wonder, is God? Is it possible he is asleep, like our Lord in the tempest-battered boat of today’s Gospel? Is our faith so weak that we feel the need, like the apostles, to wake him up? To rouse God from his slumber? We are often tempted to echo the words of the psalmist: “Up, Lord, why sleepest thou? awake, and be not absent from us for ever. Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our misery and trouble?” (Ps. 43:25-26). It would behoove us rather to bear in mind the words aother psalm (Ps. 120:2-4): “My help cometh even from the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; and he that keepeth thee will not sleep. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”
As Bob Dylan pointed out so memorably, “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.” Surprising though this may be, it is in the very onslaught of turmoil and hatred, the very wind that threatens to blow us on to the rocks, that we are to find the peace we seek so desperately. For “in this dark world of sin, the Blood of Jesus whispers peace within.” It’s the first verse of our hymn of the week, and we would do well to repeat these words to ourselves often and with deep faith.
Our Lord doesn’t need to show his face by intervening miraculously in the affairs of man. He already did that. The graces that flow from the shedding of his Precious Blood are sufficient to hold mankind over until the end of time. Do those graces seem to be running out? Okay then, maybe it really is the end of time…? Or, alternatively, those graces are not running out at all, but are merely being held back for the good of mankind… Our good Father in heaven is not beyond taking his children out to the woodshed now and again and punishing them for their godlessness. Or he may withhold his favors to teach us the lesson that without him we are nothing.
The blatant blasphemies of certain people against the rights of the unborn bear witness to their open intentions to rid our land of all reference to God and His moral law. One by one, those laws are not only being broken but actually abolished. “Thou shalt not kill” has become the latest joke to these folks, who have become jaded with the old joke “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Where will all this end? The outcome is in the hands of our blessed Lord, who is not sleeping, but observing with sadness, or perhaps anger, the evil deeds that surround us. Listen to his whisper in the wind.
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