Roman Rite
1King 19.9.11-13; Ps 85; Rm 9, 1-5; Mt 14: 22-33
XIX Sunday of Ordinary Time – August 13, 2017
Ambrosian Rite
1King 8, 15-30; Ps 48; 1 Cor 3: 10-17; MK 12, 41-44
X Sunday after Pentecost
1) The Prayer of Jesus
By reading the text of the Gospel proposed by the liturgy, our attention is captured by Christ who manifests his power by walking on waters and calming the storm… However, before talking about the power with which Christ manifests his deity, I would like to draw attention to two facts that frame today’s Gospel: the solitary prayer of Jesus (“he went up on the mountain, alone, to pray” Mt 14.23) and the little faith of Peter (“man of little faith, why have you doubted?”(Mt 14, 31).
In the intense pace of his days, Jesus always finds time for prayer. The Son of God made man prays in solitude, in the night (Mt 14, 23; Mk 1, 35; Lk 5: 16), and before a meal (Mt 14, 19; 15, 36; 26, 26-27). He prays at the time of important events: for his baptism on the Jordan river (Lk 3, 21), before choosing the twelve Apostles, (Lk 6, 12), at the transfiguration on the Mount Tabor (Lk 9: 28-29), before teaching to pray (Lk 11: 1, Mt 6, 5), in the garden of Gethsemane (Mt 26: 36-44), and on the cross (Mt 27:46; Lk 23:46). He prays for his executioners (Lk 23.34), for Peter (Lk 22.32), for his disciples, and those who follow them (Jn 17: 9-24). He prays also for himself (Mt 26, 39; 17.1 to 5; Heb 5: 7). He teaches how to pray (Mt 6, 5), and reveals a permanent relationship with the Father (Mt. 11: 25-27) certain that he never leaves him alone (Jn 8, 29) and always hears him (Jn 11, 22, 42; Mt26, 53). Finally he promises (Jn 14:16) to continue to intercede for us in his glory (Rm 8, 34; Heb 7.25; 1 Jn 2, 1).
I confess that I would love to know the secret of Christ’s prayer, even if I know that it is impossible to get into Him completely. However, you can enter at least a little, bearing in mind – first of all – that Jesus has always turned to God by calling him by the name of Father. That of Jesus is first and foremost a filial prayer. Addressing God as Father, Jesus reveals the truly unique relationship that binds him to Him. In this regard, it is important to keep in mind that Jesus was also aware of being a man, and as a man – in solitude – he was confronted with the Father and His Word to constantly find the clarity of his evangelical path and the courage to travel on it.
Secondly, it should be noted that the prayer of Jesus is obedient. It is the prayer of the Son and, at the same time, it is the prayer of the Lord’s Servant, because the relationship with the Father implies familiarity and obedience. The consciousness of one’s filiation and total dependence are the two pillars of Jesus’ prayer. They are the essential structures of his person and should be for every Christian. If we pray in authentic, total and subsidiary dependence, our prayer will be heard already in the moment we address it. Perhaps it will be accomplished in a way different than the one we expected, but it will really be granted. And each time we’ll be astonished by the infinite possibility of fulfillment that God has given to our lives giving the Life in truth and in love.
“Let us pray, dear brothers,” writes St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage,” like God, the Master, has taught us. It is a confidential and intimate prayer to pray to God with what is his, to raise up the prayer of Christ to his ears. May the Father recognize the words of his Son, when we say: the One who lives inside the soul may be present also in the voice … When praying, there is also a way of speaking and praying that, with discipline, let us keep calm and privacy. Let us think that we are in front of God’s gaze. We must be liked in the eyes of the divine both with the attitude of the body and with the tone of the voice … And when we gather together with our brothers and sisters and celebrate the divine sacrifices with the priest of God, we must remember reverential fear and discipline, neither giving to the wind our prayers with rumbling voices, nor throwing with tumultuous verbosity a request that should be recommended to God in moderation for God is a listener not of the voice but of the heart (not vocis sed cordis auditor est) “(St. Cyprian, Our Father: The Prayer of Lord 3-4). These are words that are also valid today and help us celebrate the Holy Liturgy in the Church and pray well alone at home.
2) The Prayer of Peter and ours.
In addition to the prayer of Christ, the gospel of today shows us the prayer of St. Peter who by faith got out of the boat and walked on the waters toward Jesus. Despite the fact that he left the boat because he believed in Christ, the Apostle Peter has a lack of faith and, while he is sinking, he prays better crying “Lord, save me!”
The Chief of the Apostles’ little faith is reheated by prayer. The important thing is to have faith, even if not a great one, great, and to pray like Peter: “Lord, save me!” To better explain the previous statement, I propose to go back to the dialogue between Peter, fisherman of fish, and Jesus, fisherman of men, as it is told by the Gospel of today. The First among the Apostles walks on the waters like Jesus not thanks to his own power. His ability to walk on water depends solely on the word of the Lord (“come!”). His strength lies in faith. This is a great lesson for each of us. If we are faithful clinging to Christ, we can do the same miracles of the Lord. But if this faith does waver (man of little faith, why did you doubt?”), then we return to be easy prey of the forces of evil. The doubt, referred to here, is not the intellectual doubt about the truths of Faith, but it is due to the lack of total abandonment and trusting love in Christ in the face of the difficulties of life.
The important thing is that we take the stretched hand of Christ. Saint Augustine of Hippo, imagining to speak to St. Peter, writes: the Lord “has come down and took you by hand. With your own strength you cannot get up. Take the hand of Him who comes down to you “(Enarr in Ps. 95: PL 36, 1233). He says this not only to the Head of the Apostles, but also to us. Saint Peter walks on the waters not by his own strength, but by the divine grace, in which he believes. When he is overwhelmed by doubt, when he no longer looks at Jesus, but is afraid of the wind, when he does not fully trust the Master’s word, it means that he, in the depth of is heart, is moving away from him. Then he is likely to sink into the sea of life. And so do we : if we look only to ourselves, we become dependent on winds and we can no longer overcome the storms of life. The fearful fatigue of the Galilean Fisherman makes us understand that, before we even seek or call him, the Redeemer in person comes to us, “he lowers the heaven “to offer his hand and bring us to its height. The only thing Christ demands is that we totally trust him, grasping his stretched hand with strength. In this way, we will more deeply understand God’s truth, and we will experience his love, which drags us out of the “space” of the stormy waters of life and introduces us to the space of the true peace that God gives, as we see today in St. Peter’s.
Let us pray Mary, whom in a few days we will be celebrated as Ascended into heaven. The assumption of Mary into Heaven with her body is the source of light to understand the meaning of ours earthly pilgrimage and a luminous example of loving trust and total abandonment. In this way, even among the worries and the difficulties that shake the sea of our lives, the reassuring word of Jesus who also tells us: “Courage, I am I, do not be afraid “, will resound in our hearts and our faith will grow in Him.
The solemnity of the Assumption prevents us from transforming our lives into a pilgrimage without a destination, a sailing on a boat with stormy seas without a harbor.
Finally, the usual reflection that is especially addressed to the consecrated virgins, but that I think it’s useful to everyone. On the day of the Assumption, the Church (therefore us) celebrates Mary’s ascended body to heaven, or better, the person of Mary ascended into heaven in her integrity, body and soul. Today, we easily understand that the salvation come from the resurrection of Jesus, does not concern only our soul, our person in its spiritual dimension. It is not reduced to its spiritual dimension. It’s also body. The human person is a person with a body and our body has a spiritual dimension. The Christian salvation would not be true if it were not also a saving of the body. It is very clear in St. Paul’s exhortation “I urge you, therefore, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice “(Rm 12, 1). And again: “… don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit that is in you and that you have received from God ….? Therefore, glorify God in your body “(1 Cor 6: 19.20). The offering of the body in consecrated virginity is the highest example of how one can seriously take the Saint Paul exhortation and invites us not be fooled by the seductions of the world. Many exhibitions and celebrations of the body that characterize our time are actually contempt for the body. A contempt that in the commercial spots, uses the woman’s body to sell a product.
“Therefore glorify your body!” The human body is for the glory when a human person lives his or her sexuality in loving obedience to God’s will, which is to say in obedience to the very meaning of sexuality, and to its more natural, intimate and original meaning that is not to sell or to throw the body away, but to donate it. The word chastity immediately explains austerity and self-rule. But it does not consist only in governing the passions by force. Evangelical self-rule is about delivering myself with trust to the One who created me, loves me and knows me better than myself. It is to make space within the self for the lordship of Christ that is to feel loved by Him and to wish to believe in Him and to reciprocate his love complying with what he asks. Conversion, that is, the orderly government of my person, is the attitude I take when I feel loved by God. The consecrated virgins have the vocation of living, witnessing, and reflecting this love of God.