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This Sunday most of us will notice mainly the story of
Jesus walking on water, together with Peter sinking into
it. But there is another very interesting spiritual
dimension that I would like to suggest.
What do you think was going on in Jesus’ own heart
and soul during these events?
We know that Jesus had emotions. We have seen them before,
as when Lazarus died and especially last week when he was
hit hard by news of John the Baptist’s death. So he
had taken a boat to a deserted place in order to grieve
quietly by himself. But the crowd got there first and
immediately pressed him into service when he arrived.
Instead of the hushed time of grief he needed,
Jesus’ heart had been moved by the needs of the
suffering people before him. He spent hour after hour,
healing and curing and feeding. Exhausting.
Then comes the story for this Sunday. Jesus sends the
crowd away at last. And notice a strange thing, usually
ignored. He “made the disciples get into a boat and
precede him to the other side.” Why send them ahead?
Why stay there alone? The answer is easy. He still needed
to be alone to process John’s death, which he had
not yet done.
 He climbed up on a mountainside and took his own time to
commune with his heavenly Father. The
Gospel
says that by now it was evening, and that Jesus prayed
well into the night. A gusty wind came up. He could not
have been comfortable.
I would love to know what his prayer was like. He had
studied the scriptures since his youth, so maybe the story
in our
First Reading
came to mind. There the prophet Elijah too was up on a
mountain-side, and there too, a heavy wind came up. The
Lord was not in the wind, we are told. Nor in the
earthquake that followed. Nor in the fire that came next.
The Lord God was in the final, “still, small
voice.” *
Jesus heard this voice too on the mountain-side. But what
did he feel?
Let’s take a shot at it. He opened his bruised trust
to the Father, and along with this trust, his very
personal loss. Perhaps Abba reassured him that, even
against the evidence, all human beings have to rely on
God, especially when it seems that tragedy has the upper
hand. Yes, Jesus was divine, but divine consciousness and
knowledge rested in the deepest realm of his soul, and
needed this silent time to emerge.
In prayer, Jesus returned to his normal level of trust in
God, but stronger now. In the same way that he
“learned obedience through what he suffered”
(Hebrews 5:8), maybe he had to learn a higher level of trust through
loss. Trust is not a sheer act of the will, not simply a
blind decision, but a quiet re-emergence of God’s
faithful love.
Then, at last, Jesus walked on water. How must it feel to
leave the solid ground and walk on slushy liquid? Perhaps
this walking was symbolic of the trust he had come to in
his night of prayer.
Maybe trust feels like walking on water.
Have you tried it lately? Have you been willing to step
out of the boring boat of your daily life and put
yourself, your everything into the Lord’s hands?
Consider this an invitation to do so.
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*The newer official translation of these words is:
"tiny whispering sound."
John Foley S. J.
Write me an
email! I'd like to have a discussion with you about
this.
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