Have faith, do not be afraid- Matthew 14: 22-33

THE 19 TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR A

Dear friends,

In this Gospel passage, Jesus is once again alone and taking time to pray and he essentially tells
the disciples that He will meet them on the other side of the Sea of Galilee.  So the disciples are in the boat, they are on their own and they are maybe half way across, a few miles out. In this dark part of the night, they are facing opposition, not from human enemies, but from nature. The wind picks up and it is against the boat. It is looking very dangerous!

In that dark part of the night, when nature is in her full fury, they see Jesus. He is not performing a trick on the water but He is coming towards them while walking on the water. This is Jesus coming to them with His presence on these waters. And remember that the waters are not calm, the storm is whipping up a chaos and it is in this chaos that Our Lord and Saviour makes Himself manifest. And the disciples are of course, as each of us would be, terrified and they cry out in fear. Immediately, Jesus does not let them to remain in anxiety. He quickly says, "Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid". Jesus reassures them and their faith strengthens.

Peter, despite the turmoil all around him with the high winds and rocky waves, gets out of the
boat and begins to walk towards Jesus. We are told that as soon as Peter steps out of the boat, he
starts to notice the problems around him and begins to take his eyes off of the prize, which is
Jesus. Peter begins to sink. Jesus waits for Peter to cry, "Lord save me', and immediately He is
there with His mighty hand to support Peter. They get back in the boat and immediately nature
calms down.  Jesus, who is the Lord of everything, calms everything and everybody down and in
that moment of awe, they all agree that "Truly, you are the Son of God'.

Each of us in our own daily lives experience pain, difficulties and set - backs. We might call
these experiences "stormy moments'. They are part of our daily lives and there is no way of
ignoring or avoiding them. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether we feel that we are on our own in the storm or whether we feel that Jesus is with us. When we look at the news on our televisions or read about it in our newspapers, we are sometimes overwhelmed by the amount of bad news that we see and read. There are so many countries being torn apart by Covid- 19, Civil war. Many are suffering because of years of famine; many more are dying daily
because of poverty, ignorance and hatred. Given the current reality of our world today, we have every reason to be anxious, worried and even more than a little afraid.

The danger is that we think and believe that we can get through our problems and difficulties on
our own. This gospel reminds us that we can't. Like Peter, we too are asked by Jesus to have
courage and not to be afraid. We are asked not only to have faith in ourselves, but to also reach
out and trust that Jesus will hold us and help us through whatever difficulties we experiencing.
We need to trust Jesus Christ in our lives. Not just in good times only but at all times. When we
are struggling and experiencing difficulties, we are asked to do what Peter did; we are to ask for

help. We can't manage on our own. Can we make Peter's prayer "Lord, save me? Our own, No
matter what we are experiencing, Jesus is with us. He will never