Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, August 12, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil
August 12, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, in which Jesus will help the apostles, especially St. Peter, to overcome their primal fears and through which he seeks to help us, too, to go from fear to faith, and to overcome our terror of failure, abandonment, struggle, sickness, pain, the past, the future, death, the possibility of hell and anything and everything else, too.
• 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. In the scene right before this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus had had everyone sit down on the green grass for the multiplication of the loaves and fish, so we know that it must have been mid-March to mid-April in the Holy Land, because after that the grass begins to get scorched by the sun and loses its verdant color. 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. It would have been about a 5-6 mile journey that should have taken a few hours. The storm began to rage, St. Matthew tells us, 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? It 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, Jesus’ supposed inaction was to increase their faith. He 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  It’s only then that we’re able to make the leap that faith entails. When all human means are exhausted, when even God seems to be absent, it’s then that we can make a deep 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. Jesus, however, said to them across the howling winds, “Take courage! I am (here)! Do not be afraid!!” They were words of confidence that could help assuage their fears and give them courage. We see the first fruit of that in Peter. “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. At the word of Jesus, however, “Come!,” he did what he had precisely been trying to avoid over the previous 7-10 hours or more: he 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 him 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 to head out to meet him. Peter did.
• Lifted up temporarily by faith, Peter’s density in some sense changed. He was miraculously lighter than water and capable of walking above it. But then something happened. St. Matthew tells us that Peter 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 when he swam 100 yards to see Jesus after the Resurrection), 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 word is 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 Peter 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 rescued us from the depths of sin just like he rescued Peter from the depth of water.
• Jesus’ words to Peter 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 it’s impossible to “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 promise 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. He wants to help us to do the same.
• 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 Peter’s boat that symbolizes the Church. And it’s there that Peter and the apostles worshipped Jesus and called him not just the Messiah but “The Son of God.” The whole episode was a mystagogy of growth in faith. It was a difficult lesson for the apostles 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, but to live by faith, to immerse ourselves in the depths of his love, to adore him on land and on sea, to be strengthened by him so that we will never forget that we’ve got nothing to fear because he is with us, even and especially in the midst of ferocious storms.
• Someone who shows us how to live this way is the Mother God the Father chose for his Son and that Son from Calvary chose for us. This Tuesday we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Mary, Body and Soul, into heaven. She is a model of trusting faith even in the midst of the worst storms, like the darkness and earthquake that took place Good Friday on Golgotha. She shows us how to trust in the Lord even when he asks us to believe that a 14 year girl can conceive not just a son but the Son of God without the intervention of a man, when he asks us to believe that Jesus, bathed in blood on the Cross, was still on the throne of earthly ancestor David and his kingdom would know no end. Christians across the centuries have referred to Mary under the title of “Star of the Sea,” meant to signify that no matter how rough the oceans of life, she helps us to keep our coordinates toward God and his safe, eternal shore. As Star of the Sea she is Mother of the Church guiding us back to Peter’s boat where the Blessed Fruit of her Womb remains as captain. As we prepare to celebrate her Assumption into heaven, we ask her to help us to keep our focus on her as Star of the Sea, so that we can with her and the Church reach her Son’s eternal embrace.
• The same Lord Jesus who walked on water to save and strengthen the faith of his beloved apostles comes to meet us Sunday at Mass. He wants us not to stay where we are in the pews of the nave (a word that comes from the Latin navis, for boat) but jump overboard with trust to go meet him. Like those in Peter’s barque, we will drop to our knees and adore Him as the Son of God, asking for the grace to keep our eyes always on him, begging him for his help not to be of two minds but of one mind and heart with him, like his Mother, and imploring his assistance so that that no matter what storms we’re in now or will be in later, we will never forget that he’s with us, seeking to grip and save us, and to help us grow in faithful and eternal union with him. God bless you!

The Gospel on which this homily was based was: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download