Last Sunday, as we heard the parable of the mustard seed from Mark’s Gospel, a parable about faith Today, in a continuation of Mark’s Gospel, we hear of Jesus and the disciples caught in a terrible storm, which continues to address the subject of faith. We might think that we know a lot about faith, but let’s try to reflect about faith in the context of today’s Gospel.
The first thing that sticks out to me in today’s Gospel story is this question that Jesus asks the disciples: “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” I want to relate a story to you from my missionary experiences from Ecuador, and reflecting upon that experience, unfortunately, I have a large source of stories of things that terrified me from my days as a missionary. One afternoon, I had just arrived in a canoe at the docks of our mission site. It was a very busy day; many people walking down the streets of the village and going to the marketplace to do their shopping. I was carrying a large box of plants and seedlings for my garden, so I had my hands full and had a hard time seeing what was in front of me. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I saw this little scraggly, mangy gray dog, barking and snarling, headed right toward me with a bunch of other dogs with him. Before I knew it, these dogs had surrounded me. I was very scared. Before I knew it, I felt a terrible stabbing pain on my thigh, and then felt the wetness of blood all over my leg. One of dogs, a German shepherd, had bitten me on the leg. I knew that I needed medical help immediately, so I rushed down to the medical clinic a couple of blocks away to get the wound cleaned and stitched up. Unfortunately, this is not the end of my story. Since that day, I was petrified of the dogs that wandered around our village all day long. Attacks from these dogs were not uncommon; they were accepted by the villagers as a part of life. I avoided the busy marketplace where I had been attacked, even when it meant having to walk twice the distance to get to the school where I worked each day. Finally, after about a month, I decided to confront my fears and walked through the marketplace. Wouldn’t you know, as soon as I got there, I heard barking and I saw that mean gray dog headed toward me. Frightened beyond belief, I panicked. I started screaming like a crazy person, throwing my backpack and getting out of there as fast as I could. When I arrived at the school, I told my students the story of what happened, and one of them went back to retrieve my backpack. Luckily it was still there. To this day, barking dogs in the street still terrify me. There are things in life that terrify us. Perhaps, we have things that we fear that can be stumbling blocks in our journey of faith. Perhaps we fear of failure or fear of taking a risk or fear making a commitment to our faith.
We recall the story of when Jesus goes back to Nazareth and taught in the synagogue, where many questioned his authority, rejecting his message. That passage ends by saying that Jesus did not do many deeds in that village because of their lack of faith. (Matthew 13:54-58). Other times in the Gospel, Jesus specifically says that it is the faith of the person that saves them. In the Gospel of the woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve year that we will hear next Sunday, Jesus says to her: “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction" (Mark 5:21-43). In such Gospel stories, the efficacy of what God can do in our lives appears to be directly connected to our faith. Even though the dictionary says that faith is a noun, in the context of living out our faith, faith is an action word; faith is a verb. Faith is not to be passive. We are not to just wait around for God to show up. We are called to actively search for God, to actively find ways to live out our faith and to grow in our faith.
We would be naïve to think that our faith life is going to smooth sailing, that we are not going to hit rough patches. It may be a challenge to stay committed to our faith when things are going well; we might not feel like we need God in those moments, feeling engaged with God at the time. Other times, it may be a challenge to stay committed to our faith in moments of crisis or grief, in times of suffering or loss, feeling that God has abandoned us. Some of us go through long periods of doubt and questioning and searching for something in life that we feel is missing. Yet, God always meets us in our reality, whatever that reality is. God reaches out to us in our reality, but we have to reach back.
Faith is a the heart of a week long commemoration in the Catholic Church in our country called Religious Freedom Week. It begins on June 22 with the feast day of St Thomas More and St John Fisher, two men who were martyred by King Henry VIII for standing up for their Catholic faith. This week-long period also commemorates the feast days of other important witnesses for our faith, those who remained faithful in the face of persecution and political power, including St John the Baptist, St Peter, and St Paul. The theme this year is “Solidarity in Freedom.” In Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis asserts that “solidarity means much more than engaging in sporadic acts of generosity. It means thinking and acting in terms of community” (116). Religious freedom allows the Church, and all religious communities, to live out their faith in public and to serve the good of all. We will be talking more about Religious Freedom Week in our daily Masses during those day.
Sometimes, like the disciples on that boat, we may fear that we are going down in the stormy waters around us. We might have felt that way this year during the pandemic. But, in our fears and in our weaknesses, we are called to be courageous, we are called to walk by faith. May we hear Jesus calling out to us: “Fear not! Do not be afraid!”
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