19A Beginning to sink….!
I saw a cartoon that show a lady walking on some cases of bottled water and the caption read, “walking on water”!
In Mathew 14:30, from today’s Gospel text we hear……beginning to sink Peter cried out, "Lord, save me.””
If he had prayed a longer prayer, he would have been twenty-nine feet under water before he would have gotten to his request. Peter got right down to business, and you and I need to pray like that.
‘Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him!’
We have to remember that in our dark moments because this incident happened during the fourth watch of the night, between 3 AM and 6 AM.
Factories with night shifts have higher rates of accidents in these early hours. We don’t think as clearly in these early hours. These hours of testing or trial.
e.g. A doctor phoned his patient one afternoon and told him, "I have some bad news and some worse news. The bad news is that all your tests show you have 24 hours to live." The patient said, "What could be worse than that?" The doc answered, "I've been trying to reach you since yesterday."
A lesson for us is that God will come and help us but not when we want him to come. He comes to us in his time. It might be during the fourth watch.
The message is not to let our experiences of life overwhelm our experiences of faith.
Perform in the storm.
2). Peter could walk on water when he looked at Jesus— Our energy is the fundamental currency of high performance. Every thought, feeling, and action has an energy consequence. Some say that managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance.
When walking on water, don’t look down at your feet because this represents yourself without God in our life, and your past limitations.
e.g. A holy man heard that his apprentice was able to walk on water. “How did you do this?,” he asked the apprentice.
“At every step I simply repeated your saintly name and that is what held me up,” replied the apprentice.
So the holy man ran down to the river bank and stepped onto the water. “Me, me, me,” he said, and he sank to the bottom.
Someone said, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in rain.”
Peter got out of the boat. If you want to walk on water, you got to get out of the boat. Your boat could be your house, your car, your job, your relationships—do something for God with them that you have not done before.
3. Fear--
Jesus doesn't censure feelings. He did not say, "Do not be afraid, it is I". He said, "It is I, do not be afraid". We add to our fear by attempting to maintain an appearance of strength and then worrying that how we really feel will be found out. Or, we may simply retreat in our own world. When we stop denying our fear or fighting it, we can accept it. We no longer fear our fear. Trouble is a tunnel which we pass through and not a brick wall against which we must break our head.
We learn that fear can be replaced with faith. We can begin to let down our guard and then realize that we had only the illusion of control.
We learn to let go of our fear, and when we do, God gives us the strength needed to meet the situation at hand.
Anxiety is transformed by Christian hope. Jesus is Lord of all time, past, present, and future. Our self-confidence comes from confidence in God.
Courage is rooted in hope--an expectation that safety is close at hand, a prevailing by God that conquerors even death. The hope that is the “ground” of courage lifts us out of narrow self-concern and centers our attention on God. We direct our attention to what He would have us be, and we start to grow past our fears.
F.E.A.R. - Face Everything And Recover.
Romano Guardini, whom Pope B16 admired, said: The Lord “is always close, being at the root of our being. Yet we must experience our relationship with God between the poles of distance and closeness. By closeness we are strengthened, by distance we are put to the test.” The spiritual life is often compared to a battle or combat, and peace is often at stake in the battle. Dom Lorenzo Scupoli, one of the great spiritual masters of the sixteenth century, who was highly esteemed by Saint Francis de Sales, said: “The devil does his utmost to banish peace from one’s heart, because he knows that God abides in peace and it is in peace that He accomplishes great things.”
Even though our emotional and spiritual life are distinct, they do influence each other. Obedience to God is what keeps our spiritual life from becoming subject to the windswept waves of our emotions. Like our First Reading notes from 1 Kings 19, God was heard in “a tiny whispering sound,” which is a contemplative whisper.
We may not be able to control our feelings, but we do have the power to act. Sooner or later our feelings will catch up to our good actions.
From very early times, the Church began to call Mary the "Star of the Sea," Stella Maris. She prays for us, shines her light to guide us along our way by her intercessory prayer.
