Courage through Believing in the Love God Has For Us, Wednesday after Epiphany, January 9, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Retreat on Courage in the Christian and Priestly Life
Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland
Wednesday after Epiphany
January 9, 2019
1 Jn 4:11-18, Ps 72, Mk 6:45-52

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• As we enter more deeply into the theme of Courage in the Christian and priestly life, we can see today that and how God seeks to help us grow in the trust that makes it possible for us to be spiritually bold. Even if unconventional by worldly standards, they are effective. He puts us in circumstances where we cannot but confront our fears and be given the chance to entrust ourselves to him. The more we form that habit of trust in how he seeks to help us overcome our fears, the easier it is for us courageously to do what we ought despite our fears.
• Let’s put ourselves first in this dramatic scene whose main elements are recapitulated in some way or another in the life of every disciple. Since Jesus in yesterday’s Gospel had had everyone sit down on the green grass for the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, we know that it must have been mid-March to mid-April in the Holy Land, because the grass begins to get scorched by the sun by the end of April. That would mean sunset would have happened about 6 pm, which is the time the apostles got into the boat to begin the journey across the top of the Sea of Galilee, which would have been about a 5-6 mile trek that should have taken a few hours. The storm began to rage when they were in the middle of the Sea, so about an hour or two along their trek. Jesus came to them in the “fourth watch of the night” — the period stretching from 3-6 am — which meant that by that point, they had been in the boat 9-12 hours, battling a ferocious storm, fatigued, soaking wet and fearing for their life. Jesus was placidly praying on the mountain as they were struggling for hours not to drown to death. Why did Jesus wait so long as his friends were in peril? This scene brings us back to the other time that they were afraid for their life on the Sea, when Jesus was asleep in the bow of the boat as they thought they were about to perish. In both cases, it was to increase their faith. Jesus was introducing them to a central truth of the spiritual life: that in order to be able to abandon ourselves to God, we must first feel what appears to be total abandonment by  That’s when we’re able to make the leap, when all human means are exhausted, when even God even seems to be absent; that’s when we are able to make the act of faith to believe in him even when we can’t see or hear him.
• After hours of struggling for their lives, Jesus comes walking along the white caps of the churning sea. Their first reaction was to think they were seeing a ghost — after all, no one had ever seen a man walk on water before, not to mention surf waves without a surfboard. There was also a superstition that there were monsters at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee and likely that played into their alarm as well. But Jesus said to them across the howling winds, “Take courage! It is I! Do not be afraid!” Jesus’ actual expression in Greek is, Tharseite, Ego Eimi, mephobeisthe, which means “Take Courage, I am, Do not fear.” I am. That is the way God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, that Jesus would use again to say before Abraham was, “I am.” They were words of confidence. They were words that could help assuage their fears and give them courage.
• In St. Matthew’s eyewitness account of the same scene, we have another element which is good for us to ponder hear in a retreat on courage. It’s what happened between Jesus’ telling them not to be afraid because he was the great YHWH who spoke to Moses and quelled his fears and Jesus’ entering the boat and the storm totally quelled. St. Matthew tells us something even more incredible than Jesus’ traversing the stormy waves. St. Peter says “Lord, if it is you,” he said, “Bid me to come to you across the water.” He first refers to the walking “ghost” as “Lord,” but then he qualifies it by saying, “if it is you.” He was hovering between belief and unbelief. But at the word of Jesus, “Come!,” he did what he had precisely been trying to avoid or the previous 7-10 hours or more: he courageously went overboard. The time fearing for his life made him that much more desirous of being with the Lord Jesus. He wanted to get to Jesus as soon as he possibly could. The whole scene in some way summarizes the mystery of the Incarnation, as Jesus comes into the stormy seas of our world walking toward us and we’re all called to get up from where we are, to overcome our fears and insecurities, and head out to meet him. Peter did.
• Lifted up temporarily by faith, Peter’s density in a sense changed. Rather than weighed down by fear to the point of incapacitation, he was buoyed by courage and by God’s power became lighter than water and capable of walking above it. But then something happened we cannot miss. St. Matthew tells us that he took account of the winds. He took his eyes off of Jesus. He began to focus on the human impossibility of what he and Jesus were both doing and then the downward force of gravity, corresponding to the downward glance of his heart, overcame him. He began to sink in the waves. Though an expert on that sea and a good swimmer (as we see in John 21 when he swam a hundred yards to meet Jesus on the shore after Jesus had called out to them for the second miraculous draught of fish), he began to fear for his life. The words from Psalm 69 began to take on new meaning: “Do not let me sink. Rescue me from … the watery depths. Do not let the floodwaters overwhelm me, nor the deep swallow me.” In response to Peter’s cry for help, the Lord reaches out to save him. The expression St. Matthew uses means he gripped him in his arms. The storm was still raging. The winds were blowing. The waves were swirling all around. The Sea was still 140 feet deep. But he was safe. Jesus had saved him. We call Jesus Savior not out of piety because it’s a nice title to give him. We call him Savior because he has in fact us from the depths of sin just like he saved Peter from the depth of water.
• Jesus’ words to Peter as he was gripping him are highly significant. He said, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” The verb translated “to doubt” here really means “to be of two minds.” Peter was divided. Part of him believed, part of him doubted. Part of him trusted in Jesus, part of him attributed more power to the wind and the waves. But we can’t really “half-trust” in God. That’s what this whole exercise of faith on the Sea of Galilee was meant to train Peter and the others to grasp. Peter would be of two minds elsewhere as well. He would confess Jesus to be the Messiah and Son of God but then would forbid him to suffer in order to fulfill his mission. He would swear during the Last Supper that he would never betray the Lord even if he should have to die for him, but then he would swear an oath denying him three times in the high priest’s courtyard. The Lord was trying to help him to become of one mind, one heart, one soul in faith.
• The last part of this scene happens when Jesus, still carrying Peter, enters the boat. That’s when the storm dies down, when Peter and Jesus are back in the boat that symbolizes the Church as a whole. And it’s there that they worshipped Jesus and called him not just the Messiah but “The Son of God.” The whole episode was a mystagogy of growth in faith and of the courage that is meant to flow from faith in contrast to the fear that accompanies a two-minded faith. It was a difficult lesson for them to learn, but one communicated in a way they — and the Church with them! — have never been able to forget. Likewise, Jesus has created us not to drown in fears and anxieties, not to be inundated by the toxic pool of our sinfulness, but to live by faith, to immerse ourselves in the depths of his mercy, to adore him on land and on sea, to be strengthened by him and know that we’ve got nothing to fear because he is with us, even if we’re in the midst of ferocious storms.
• For this to occur, however, we must trust in him. We must believe in him. St. John, who was present in the boat, seeks to help the first Christians and all of us do so in his first reading. He does so by reminding us of the love that God has for us and inspiring us to love God in return. “God is love,” he says, “and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. In this is love brought to perfection among us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.” He goes on to say, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.” St. John wants us to be brought to perfection, to completion, in the love of God, which will help us to be courageous because it will drive out fear. When we know God loves us and has triumphed even over death, we’re unafraid of anything, including dying. This is what emboldened Peter and John before the same Sanhedrin whose machinations led to the brutal crucifixion of Jesus. If Jesus were raised on the third day, then why should they worry about the Sanhedrin’s threats? This is what emboldened so many generations of martyrs. They knew that no matter how painful their execution might be, as soon as they were dead they would be in the presence of the God who loves them, entering into the communion of saints within the loving communion of persons who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is what is meant to embolden us to remain in that love of God here, pondering it, basking in it, and intensifying it by sharing it with others, loving them with the same love with which God loves them flowing out through our mind, heart, soul and strength.
• John says a beautiful phrase that was at the root of his own priestly courage. “We have come to know and believe in the love God has for us.” We’re living at a time in which so many people — including priests, religious, seminarians and novices — do not really know they’re loved by God or lovable at all. This leads to so many other problems, fears, anxieties, and a skyrocketing demand for psychologists and counselors. There are many reasons for this crisis, including the breakdown of the family and the absence of truly loving fathers in the lives of so many, but one of the reasons is because they don’t experience the love of God enough through the Church. Jesus had prayed during the first Mass that we would be one just as he and the Father are one so that through our loving communion the world might know that the Father sent the Son and loves us just as much as he loves the Son. Jesus came to reveal the Father’s love. He said during the Last Supper discourse, “Father loves you,” and “Just as the Father loves me, so I love you.” The Father loves each of us so much that he allowed his Son to die as a ransom to save our own life, a love that the Son fully shared. We don’t ponder this enough. We don’t preach about this enough. We don’t practice this love enough.
• That’s why Pope Benedict, with his incredibly synthetic mind, wrote his first encyclical letter to try to address this modern malady, which is behind so many fears people have today. In the opening paragraph of Deus Caritas Est, he wrote, “Saint John …offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: ‘We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.’ We have come to believe in God’s love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John’s Gospel describes that event in these words: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should … have eternal life’ (3:16). In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel’s faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth. The pious Jew prayed daily the words of theBook of Deuteronomy which expressed the heart of his existence: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might” (6:4-5). Jesus united into a single precept this commandment of love for God and the commandment of love for neighbour found in the Book of Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18; cf. Mk 12:29-31). Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere “command”; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us. In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.”
• This love finds its greatest expression here at Mass, in what Jesus himself to St. Margaret Mary called the Sacramentum Caritatis, the Sacrament of His Love, where he gives us his body and blood to be our food. As he does so today, he says to us, “Tharseite, Ego Eimi, mephobeisthe,” “Take Courage, I am, Do not fear,” as he sustains us as he gripped onto Peter, and climbs into us as he did into Peter barque.

The readings for today’s Mass were: