For the 12th Sunday of OT (Year B) the Church offers us a consoling picture of the Lord who truly is with His Church inspite of the fact that the Church may doubt His presence. The Gospel text is from Mark 4:35-41. Jesus is crossing to the other side of the Sea of Galilee on a boat with his disciples. There were many boats with them, but the boat that Mark focuses on is the boat where Jesus was. While at sea, a storm breaks and the disciples found themselves in danger of being engulfed. Engulfed by a great fear and about to be engulfed by the Sea, they turn to Jesus and find him … asleep!
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Reading Guide
1.After breaking down Mark 4:35-41 with your sentence flow, notice the following:
- The contrasts in the narrative
- the reaction of the disciples at the end of the story
- what Jesus says after he calms the storm
2. Study the following passages:
- control over the sea as a characteristic of God’s power
- Job 7:12
- Psalm 74:13
- Psalm 89:8-9
- Psalm 93:3-4
- Isaiah 51:9-10
- calming a storm at sea is a sign of God’s love and care
- Psalm 107:23-32
- a peaceful and untroubled sleep is a sign of perfect trust in God
- Proverbs 3:23-34
- Psalm 3:5; 4:8
- Job 11:18-19
Comparing the Readings
The gospel reading is in syntony with the one taken from Job 38:1.8-11. The passage is God’s response to the debate that Job is having with his friends. The whole point of His response is that the problem of evil is a mystery hidden deep in God’s wisdom and no man can fathom it. Before the problem of evil, one can only draw near to God in trust. At this stage in His reply, God challenges Job by drawing attention to the Divine power and wisdom at the moment of creation. Here, the focus is on the limitations that God puts around the Sea and the control He has over it. Thus when Jesus calms the storm, there was divine power at work. The disciples draw our attention to this by the question they ask about “this man”, at the end of the story. The responsorial psalm is about an event at sea where the calming of a storm saves the lives of many. The psalmist attributes it to a saving act of God and declares the event a sign of His loving Providence.
Suggestions for the Lesson
The gospel narrative is a nature miracle story that was transformed into a catechetical lesson. In other words, the story happened, but the evangelist has so transformed it that it no longer appears simply as a retelling of a miracle but has become a lesson that has relevance to a community of faith that finds itself persecuted and in trouble. Wilfrid Harrington suggests that the situation may as well be post-Ascension, where the community of faith doubts whether the Lord is truly with them or thingks he has abandoned them to be tossed to and fro by the winds of history while he sits comfortably at the right hand of God. For someone like Augustine, the catechetical lesson is about prayer. He says that when ltroubles become like waves tossing the boat of one’s life and threatens to engulf it, then one should rise up in prayer and awake Him who sleeps in our hearts.
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