Growing up at the Jersey Shore, I have always felt a particular affinity for the many passages in the New Testament that talk about lakes, rivers, seas, and boats; I suspect you many Floridians would have a similar connection. Not infrequently, those texts deal with fearsome situations, causing Our Lord to reply with those characteristically assuring words (which became a mantra of John Paul II, who would step into the shoes of Peter the Fisherman two millennia later): “Be not afraid.”
Today we are treated to one of those fear-inducing Gospels with the apostolic boat being swamped by tumultuous waves–while Christ sleeps through it all, causing the terrified disciples to cry out: “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” Cardinal Ratzinger, as he led the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday in 2005 (but days before he would trade in his Prada shoes for those of the Fisherman), exclaimed: “Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side.”
Commenting on a similar passage, but with a bit more hope, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: “The wind symbolizes the temptations and persecution the Church will suffer due to lack of love. For, as St. Augustine says, when love grows cold, the sea becomes rougher and the boat begins to founder. Yet the wind, the storm, the waves and the darkness will fail to put it off course and wreck it.” As Our Lord chides the Apostles, we should hear Him speaking to us as well, 2000 years later: “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?”
The skittishness we feel this past decade or so may well come from the fact that we were accustomed to putting too much confidence in the visible helmsmen like John Paul and Benedict, rather than in the ultimate Captain.
With no small amount of British wit and irony, the unflappable convert and apologist of the last century, Monsignor Ronald Knox, noted: “He who travels in the Barque of Peter had better not look too closely into the engine room.” The message is simple: Stop snooping into the engine room too often and heed the wise counsel of the Epistle to the Hebrews: “Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus” (12:2).
As St. John Paul closed the Great Jubilee of 2000 on the Solemnity of the Epiphany 2001, he wrote these hope-filled words in his Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte:
…our hearts ring out with the words of Jesus when one day, after speaking to the crowds from Simon’s boat, he invited the Apostle to “put out into the deep” for a catch: “Duc in altum” (Lk 5:4). Peter and his first companions trusted Christ’s words, and cast the nets. “When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish” (Lk 5:6).
Duc in altum! These words ring out for us today, and they invite us to remember the past with gratitude, to live the present with enthusiasm and to look forward to the future with confidence: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb 13:8).
Dear friends and fellow-shipmates, Christ is still in the Barque of Peter, even if He seems to be asleep at the wheel at times. So: “Be not afraid!”
(Note: This homily was preached at the Conference hosted by the Donahue Academy at Ave Maria, Florida, on the theme, “Fiat! Devotion to Mary in the Life of the Catholic Classical Educator.”)
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You write: “The skittishness we feel this past decade or so may well come from the fact that we were accustomed to putting too much confidence in the visible helmsmen like John Paul and Benedict, rather than in the ultimate Captain.”
This is probably the wisest thing I’ve read on CWR (and from this author) in a very long time.
Allow me to insert one small addendum: Our confidence in the visible helmsmen like John Paul and Benedict was really a reflection of our confidence (over-confidence) in our own limited conceptual framework. We loved them because they thought like us. Now things are a bit different, and we experience a bit of cognitive dissonance. If we get another John Paul II or Benedict, we are very likely to return to the same old habit of putting too much confidence in that visible helmsman. Knox is right. We didn’t look took closely into the engine room when JPII and Benedict were at the helm, but we are looking very closely now, primarily as a function of our own Confirmation Bias. But others noticed things about JPII and Benedict that we did not, and we dismissed them. No matter who is at the helm, don’t look too closely, keep your eyes on Christ, and listen to and learn from everyone. This is a point that the greatest Protestant theologians of the century had been making for decades. Our Roman ears were just not ready to hear it. Now they are.
Amen Fr. Stravinskas be not afraid.
God Speed
“Christ is still in the Barque of Peter, even if He seems to be asleep at the wheel at times. So:’Be not afraid’.”
“Vatican II must be understood in light of Tradition.”
To understand that Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church must be understood in light of Tradition, is to affirm The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque) and thus affirm there Is Only One Word Of God, there are not various denominations of The Word Of God Incarnate subsisting within Christ’s Church.
Be not afraid to follow The Word Of Perfect Love Incarnate!
Dear Blessed Mother, Mary, Who Through Your Fiat, Affirmed The Filioque, hear our Prayer, that your Immaculate Heart Will Triumph soon for the sake of Christ, His Church, all who will come to believe, and all prodigal sons and daughters, who, hopefully, will return to The One Body Of Christ, which exists Through, With, And In Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost(Filioque). Amen.
Sail away with eyes closed and hope for safe harbor. Yes, faith in Christ will get us home. Although the engine room since Knox’s day is flooded with vile bilge water. So vile that Knox himself would be heaving from the side rail.
Laity priest and deckhand reeling about have lost all their skills. So it seems. It doesn’t appear what’s occurring now in Church and world has precedence. And yes, it will be responded with, That’s what they said during past crises. Though show me a time when the supreme pontiff himself the helmsman headed the ship into turbulence, storm and vortex. Doctrine the multitudes held onto for safety during the centuries have slipped from grasping hands.
If we priests are the deckhands on the Barque do we have a choice? Mustn’t we alert all? Mustn’t we holler to the captain at the helm to clarify his purposes, delineate what bearings agree with aged charts that will bring us safely home when buffet from wind and wave say otherwise?