Dear Friends,
For the ancient world, the sea was a dangerous place,
capable of swallowing up travelers. It was full of evil spirits, who had caused
the upheavals in the sea.
In the
Hebrew Bible, only God had power over the sea. God, in the Book of Job, says to
the stormy sea:
Thus far shall you come and no
farther.
Here shall your proud waves be
stilled.
But in our
contemporary times, we think we can tame nature to do our will, to make it
perform, give up its treasures, become what it was not intended to be. Then,
along comes a leader like Pope Francis,
relative in faith to Il Poverello, Francis of Assisi. Writing in his encyclical Laudate Si, Pope Francis, in effect, says to the
world about our faulty environmental ambitions:
Thus far
shall you come and no farther.
All
contemporaries who want creation to be shaped to our brilliant designs, our
re-routing, our dreams of conquest, Francis, Bishop of Rome says: Our goal …is
to become painfully aware, to turn what is happening to the world into our own
personal suffering, and thus, to discover what each of us can do about it. (Laudato
si, n.19)
To go back
to the water imagery with which these thoughts began, Pope Francis calls us to
a sea-change – a change that is significant beyond our expectations, arises
turbulently, when we are not fully aware that it is coming.
The
disciples of Jesus in the boat on the Sea of Galilee experienced the roiling
water and the threat of personal destruction – they, whose numbers included
fishermen, grew frightened by the ferocity of the storm. But Jesus was not
distressed. He was asleep in the boat. What this storm offered the disciples is
what it offers us: the potential for new
thinking, new being, new acting, fresh starts. Jesus says to us, as He did to
the waterlogged disciples
Why
are you so terrified?
Why
are you lacking in faith?
God had not
abandoned them at the height of the storm. God will not abandon us or our earth
as it and we experience upheaval. Not one to mince words, at the end of his strong
call letter to the world on behalf of our common home, the earth Pope Francis
reminds us that our common human quest is not for the sake of death, but for
life: May our struggle and our concern for this planet never take away the joy
of our hope. (Laudato si, n.244)
Let’s get
into the boat with the sleeping Jesus and his fearful disciples. Together with
them and our human family, hope can be ours as we sail to the opposite shore
with our common good in mind.
~Sister Joan Sobala
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