My dear parishioners and visitors;
Being a boat person, packed in like a sardine in a small boat floating and drifting in the ocean for 2 nights and 1 day in April 1986, I love this Sunday’s gospel-story: Jesus calming the stormy sea (Mk 4:35-41).
St. Mark vividly tells us that the apostles and Jesus were in a boat crossing to the other side of the sea. Their boat suddenly was in a deadly stormy sea. However Jesus was “in the stern, asleep on the cushion”. The apostles were terrified crying for help. Finally he woke up and said to the sea “Peace, be still!” and there came a great calm. Then he questioned them “why are you afraid?” The apostles, witnessing this amazing miracle, asked themselves “who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him”. St. Mark concluded.
This story is a metaphor of our lives in a stormy world as followers of Christ. The basic lesson is about Jesus’ divine power to overcome all obstacles, to destroy evils and to restore life (CCC. 1808) also about his saving power and loving care for his followers. A stormy sea stands for the trials, tribulations, chaos, forces of evil that the Church, our Mother, symbolized by a boat, with her sons and daughters, you and me, is constantly facing in this ocean of life. Life, as we know, is often flooded with challenges, struggles and crosses. No one has a life that is free of problems. This great story challenges us to believe in Jesus and invites us turning to him in a faithful prayer whenever we may be in a stormy sea of life.
Reading, reflecting and praying with this beautiful story I am thinking about those among us in St. Ann’s, our parish-family, and in Quesnel, our loving community, who are now in a stormy sea of life. This week please offer our prayers, good works and sacrifices to pray for them.
Have a blessed week. Fr. Peter Hoan Nguyen.