269. Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time (B)

Meditations no. 256 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Faith in the holy Church founded on Christ.

Our Lord went on board Peter’s boat to preach to the crowds who were following him. When he had finished preaching he dismissed the crowd, and asked the Apostles to row out across the lake. And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. Tradition identifies this boat with the Church, which voyages across the sea of the world, beaten upon by the waves of persecutions and heresies down through the ages; but always firm on her course.

From the first moments of her life the holy Church had to face attacks and difficulties from inside and out. There have always been sicknesses and sick people. While the Apostles were still alive there were already heretics; you only have to look in the Acts, or the Epistles, to see that.

In one way or another these difficulties are always present, causing suffering to the Church, and with her, to her faithful children. The Church is in the midst of a terrible storm, like the one on the Sea of Galilee when Jesus was asleep in Peter’s boat. And now too it seems as though he were asleep. Our Father warned us some years ago: It is common knowledge that for some time now, the Church has been in a painful, anarchical kind of situation, which gives rise to continually renewed confusion in doctrine, morals and discipline, causing serious harm to souls.

In every age the Church is buffeted by winds bent on destroying her. She has to make her way through the stormy seas of human passions aroused in those who refuse to submit to God’s laws. And not infrequently in her history, she has suffered from the inertia and weakness of the very people who should have defended her. The elements seem to be leagued together in order to vent their fury upon the Church, as they did on the little boat as it crossed the Sea of Galilee. But Christ is alive in the Church, and as a result the powers of death shall not prevail against it. We are given a great sense of security by these words of the Master, who has also promised to remain with his Spouse to the close of the age.

We ought not to be worried. All human things pass away, but the Church remains for ever, one and the same, just as Christ wanted her. The gates of hell, that is to say, the realm of death, which engulfs everything that does not belong to Christ, can never prevail against the Church. Christ is present, and the boat cannot sink. The fact of God’s presence in her means that our faith in the Church remains unshakeable in the face of any occurrences whatsoever, in the midst of any storms. This ship which is taking us to heaven cannot sink, because God himself has pledged his word. Because we know through faith that we are the children of Christ’s Church, we feel a security and serenity that no human weakness can ever upset.

Faith gives us fortitude amid difficulties.

Our Lord and his Apostles were on the boat. There were huge waves, and water was pouring in on all sides. But Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?”

What little faith we have if a momentary increase in the violence of the storm makes us start to doubt! We are sometimes too easily influenced by circumstances, and can even come to lose our serenity and our peace. This should not happen. A serene soul, which is safe in Christ our Lord’s boat, and has the principles and the constant formation we receive in Opus Dei year by year, day by day, moment by moment, through the established means; a soul like that, a man, a woman like that, has nothing to fear on this earth. Even if the world goes down, I won’t! Because Christ’s boat cannot sink, even when the battering it receives from some quarters might make us think that shipwreck must be imminent.

It may seem for a short, or not so short, time that Christ is not there, that he has abandoned us. But what does it mean, to say that Christ is asleep in you? asks St Augustine. Why, that it is you who have forgotten Christ. Wake him up, bring him to mind, because waking Christ up means being close to him. This is what the Apostles did when they cried out to him. And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?”

Living a life of faith; seeing Christ in the Church, in the Work, and in our own heart. When we know that God is at our side, in our personal struggle, in our apostolate, and in the whole life of the Church, we feel secure and strong, fortes in fide, strong in the faith with God’s own strength; and we will always win the victory.

God our Lord is in his Church, close to us, and we have nothing to fear. And so, finally, we should come to the conclusion that we have to be more faithful, firmer in our doctrine, determined to go back to God when we have strayed from him, however little or however much, and to surrender our heart and mind to him unconditionally.

Constant, trusting prayer for the Church.

Our vocation is something wonderful. At the present time, our Father said in 1969, when God is allowing the Church to be in a worse state than in Luther’s days; at the present time, when dogma, morals, customs, the sanctity of marriage and the priesthood are all under attack, and ecclesiastical discipline is crumbling away in many places, it makes me so happy to open the letters I get and see how, throughout the world, there are thousands of brothers and sisters of yours who are strong in their faith.

And they don’t lose their peace, because they concentrate on doing apostolate. Let’s continue like that, and we will always be very happy, very peaceful, very serene, and full of hope: fortes in fide!

Opus Dei has grown thanks to this life of faith, which is a gift from God to enable us to see Jesus Christ guiding his Church, leading the Work, and arranging everything in our own lives. So whatever circumstances the Church is going through at a given moment, it should never discourage us, but be a stimulus to increase our faith, a spur to improve our prayer. As our Father told us: This situation hurts us deeply, and the very hope we have, which is unshakeable - portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus eam, the gates of hell will not prevail against it; ecce ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus usque ad consummationem saeculi, behold I am with you always, until the end of the world - it is this very hope that moves me to beg you, for the love of Jesus Christ, to intensify, to redouble your prayer for the universal Church.

Today we make a firm resolution to persevere in confident prayer; to turn to our Lord, who is close at hand, in times of difficulty, just as the Apostles turned to him when the storm got wilder. What we have to do is be faithful. And pray, my daughters and sons, pray a lot: our greatest weapon has been, is, and always will be prayer. Pray to give glory to God, and so as to work with the right intentions at all times. If we are centred totally on God, so that our consciousness of being in his presence and our daily work combine in the desire to serve our Lord, then we will never go astray.

You realize that this is the only means by which we do anything: prayer. Without this constantly renewed dialogue with our Lord, nothing can work out well. Pray, seek a continual conversation with the Father, with the Son, with the Holy Spirit, and you will find God’s peace, God’s serenity.

In this way you will possess the joy of surmounting all the tides and every storm, because God will always be our strength, in spite of our personal mistakes. He will keep us clean and fearless. Benedicam te in vita mea: et in nomine tuo levabo manus meas. So we shall bless you, O Lord, throughout our lives, and rejoice to raise up our hands in prayer to you …

May your prayer reach God through the most sweet Heart of our Mother, our Blessed Lady. Get her to intercede, as she did at the wedding feast at Cana: When the wine failed, she said to Jesus, “They have no wine.” You will see how this flood of muddy water that threatens to swamp everything, will turn into Christ’s wine: nourishment - doctrine - to comfort us in our weakness; and strength, to set our souls on fire with faith, hope, love, and union.