Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

Title

Trusting God in the Dark

Outline

When my wife was in a serious traffic accident on her way north to college

She was given a LP album by the White Sisters and a particular song comforted her, “Trust God in the Dark.”

It did not say that God would then bring light, but that he would bring one through the dark.

The fact is that we are not capable of understanding why stuff happens but we can understand enough about the God who spoke the universe and all its history into existence in one act to know who is in control and to know that he is love.

That is God’s answer to Job

Job, deep in grief, has been complaining God must have made a mistake, having no idea of the God - Satan conflict nor the good that God will bring to Job in the end.

God responds, not with an explanation, but with questions about how much Job knows about God’s creative power and the interrelations of the universe. It is only when Job acknowledges that he does not understand at all and spoke without understanding that God restores Job’s well-being without ever explaining the why to Job. He learned to trust God in the dark.

The Gospel calls the disciples to trust

After a hard day of teaching Jesus instructs the disciples to take him to the other side of the lake. They obey immediately without making further preparations. Note that there was more than one boat.

Then came the great lailaps (downdraft storm from the heights around the lake). Things looked bad. But Jesus sleeps, both because he was tired from the day and because he was following his Father’s will.

The disciples wake Jesus, surprised that is so calm. He does not grab an oar or one of the lines to sail to help out; he does not prepare to have to swim. He calmly says, “Quiet! Be still!” He imposes his calm on the wind and sea. And then he asks the disciples, many experienced sailors on the lake, “Why are your terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” You do not yet trust God and his providence. This is all part of his love.

The disciples get it that Jesus is someone special, but I do not think that they got the point about trust, about faith. At least, not yet.

Paul points to the love of Christ as the means to peace

Just before this he laid out his sufferings for the gospel that were wearing out his body. Then he explains that when his body dies he is longing for a transformed body, ideally coterminous with his death so that he is not “naked” as with the Blessed Mother or perhaps Sheldon Vanaucken’s A Severe Mercy. So Paul keeps on with his mission, “For the love of Christ impels us,” not his love for Christ but Christ’s love for us, for Christ died for all. Therefore the living “no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” He is already experiencing transformation in his heart, he is living as a new or renewed creation, and is no longer concerned with life “according to the flesh,” the threats and punishment he encounters in ministry, the difficult people in the Church, etc., but rather with new creation life. He can see with his renewed soul all as new creation and works to bring others to experience it too, longing for the day when it will be physically expressed.

Well, perhaps you and I are not Paul

We feel like Job, but Job is written to give us a new perspective on our sufferings. We may be scared by what is happening in our world, but Jesus is saying, “Trust me. Just do as I say. And be at peace.” We may feel like we are suffering Pauline tribulations, but Paul says, “Look at the risen Christ and experience the new creation.”

That is the key. First we put behind ourselves all that is “according to the flesh,” according to this age. Our sins, our political thoughts, our material concerns. Then we spend time daily lifting our eyes to Christ and the new creation: “O Jesus, king of love, I put my trust in your merciful goodness.” Do this in your room whenever you feel anxiety. Do this before the blessed sacrament as often as you can, and especially let the body and blood of Christ sharpen your inner vision from within. Let God infuse in you faith, hope and charity, the love of Christ.

And then you will experience what these passages are talking about, experience it as your reality of the new creation.