Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, August 8, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) (Vigil)
August 8, 2020

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

The text that guided the homily was: 

• 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 helps the apostles, especially St. Peter, to overcome their primal fears and through which he seeks to help us, too, go from fear to faith, 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. Since Jesus, as we saw in last week’s Gospel, had just had everyone sit down on the green grass, 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 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, 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 we 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! I am (here)! Do not be afraid!!” They were words of confidence. They were words 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. 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 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 head out to meet him. Peter did.
• Lifted up temporarily by faith, Peter’s density in a sense changed. He was lighter than water and capable of walking above it. But then something happened. 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 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” (Ps 69). 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 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 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. 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, but to live by faith, to immerse ourselves in the depths of his love, to adore him on land and on sea, to be strengthen 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.
• 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 the boat, 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, and imploring his assistance to remember that no matter what storms we’re in now or will be in later, that he’s with us, seeking to grip and save us, and help us grow in faithful union with him.

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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