Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Jesus wants to strengthen our faith in God’s help and protection, our Christian optimism in the midst of a world of unbelief, a sinful and evil world. The church can really be likened to a stormy plague. It is the reality of our lives. The boat of our life wants to get to the port of eternal life. When we believe that God, eternal peace, awaits us at the end, Jesus wants to tell us that we will not avoid many and varied storms at the sea of ​​our lives. Every person’s life is marked by lightning, storms, waves, suffering, disease, failure. Who will find a person who has not experienced any of this? One thing and another something else, someone longer and another in greater intensity, but we all have to go through life on earth as a stormy sea. Who to envy? And often, a person becomes convinced that God is not interested in him, as if Jesus were asleep. In fact, we often witness such words: If he were God, he would not have sick of me, my father would not have died, there would have been no war, there would have been no other judgments that God is not interested in ordinary people. How much panic, pettiness knocks on the door of hearts then! Water pours into the boats of our lives. And do we not behave like disciples and cry out, “Teacher, do you not care that we perish?” (Mark 4:38)

The story is well known when everyone lost their hope of rescue; only a little boy is playing peacefully. And when asked if he is afraid, he replies, “No! Why should I be afraid because my father is the captain of the ship? “

The Lord of our lives is neither another man nor we, but God. Who knows what our God’s plans are for us? Why lose your head? When God allowed him, would he forsake us? After all, our God is good. He knows what’s in store for us. Didn’t Jesus teach us to pray “be thy will”? Wasn’t Jesus a model for us in Gethsemane, on Golgotha? After all, for these things and events, He has become like us in everything but sin. Therefore, he accepted the nature of man to have hope in him. No one can say that Jesus excluded him from his love. Just as there must be storms at sea, so there must be trials in our lives. How and by what would we deserve eternal life? After all, God is a just Judge who rewards the good and punishes the bad. He wants; he wants us to believe and believe him. He rightly demands that we accept him as our Lord and God; he wants us to believe in joyful and solemn moments and during crosses and difficulties.

The French writer Lamennais writes about a farmer worried about his family, what would happen if he died. He once noticed birds flying into the bush. As he approached, he saw two nests next to him and several young in them. Old birds flew in and fed their young. At one point, he saw a predator lunging at a bird that was carrying food in its beak. The young were left without a breadwinner. He had been worried about that all day. He could not sleep at night. In the morning, when he returned to the field, he went to see the young. He thought they must have perished. And what did he see? The cubs were lively and alert. Astonishment filled his heart. He saw the female from the second nest bringing food to the chicks in both nests for a moment. The orphans were not abandoned.

We already read in the Psalms, “The godless needed not knowing, for there is no lack of good in those who seek the Lord” (Ps. 34:10, 11). When we believe, we experience less fear and more joy. If we can receive good from God, why don’t we accept difficult events? We need to remain with God and with God as the Old Testament Job. We realize that “God will not reject the blameless, nor will he with his hands support the evil ones” (Job 8:20). The words of Benjamin Franklin to the men of the nation are known: “Let us pray, gentlemen! The older I live, the longer I live, the more I realize that God controls me. ” And don’t we have a similar experience? We know that there are events in our surroundings and perhaps in our lives that speak of an incorrect approach to Christ. And that is why today we ask that we too fulfill what God asks of us in the stormy sea of ​​life.