First Reading:

Thus far shall you come but no farther,

and here shall your proud waves be stilled! (Jb 38:11)

Psalm:

Give thanks to the Lord, his love is everlasting. (Ps 107)

Or: Alleluia.

Second Reading:

So whoever is in Christ is a new creation:

the old things have passed away;

behold, new things have come. (2 Cor 5:17)

Gospel:

They were filled with great awe and said to one another,

“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” (Mk 4:41)

Excerpts from the Lectionary for Mass ©2001, 1998, 1970 CCD.

The English translation of Psalm Responses from Lectionary for Mass © 1969, 1981, 1997, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved.

FULL READINGS

June 23, 2024

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Right now, you and I are only worried about one of only two things: wind or water. Bear with me. This week we hear the account of the terrified disciples waking Jesus in a sea-storm. He chastises them for their lack of faith, and then, “rebuking the wind, he said to the sea, ‘Quiet, be still!’” He rebukes the wind and stills the water. In the Bible wind and water represent the two most fundamental poles of our experience of creation. Wind means heaven, spirit, that which gives identity, unity, order, light. Water stands for earth, variation, potential, that which can be drawn into identity, darkness, chaos.

Too much “wind” is when things get way too rigid, abstract and ideological — when we face oppressive leaders and tyrants, when we get addicted to our own way of doing things, when our attention is too narrowly focused on one thing. Too much “water” is excessive novelty, passivity, indifference, and chaos — when our attention is too broadly diffused on many things, when things seem to be crumbling without direction into the dark abyss. We know both terrifying experiences all too well.

The point of the miracle is that God in Christ is the One who brings final cosmic harmony between these two vital but threatening forces. He ultimately does so from the wood of the cross, when he breathes forth the wind of his spirit and pours forth the water from his side to establish a new creation, filled with harmonious peace. When the wind and water are out of control, trust him.

— Father John Muir

©LPi

St. Faustina

St. Faustina (1905-1938) was born Helena Kowalska in Poland to a poor family with ten children. They were devoutly Catholic, and she felt a call to the religious life at age seven, when praying in front of the exposed Eucharist. Despite wanting to become a sister as soon as she finished her schooling, she was sent to work as a housekeeper to help support the family instead.

When she was 18, she had a vision of Jesus suffering and, in the vision, Jesus asked her how long she would keep putting off entering religious life. She decided, at that moment, to travel to Warsaw and join the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Upon entering the Congregation, she took the name Sister Maria Faustina.

During her 13 years in the Congregation, Sister Faustina experienced and recorded extraordinary revelations from Jesus. She recorded these experiences and messages into notebooks which became later known as the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska. In these writings, she reveals Jesus asking her to proclaim God’s loving message of Divine Mercy.

Alongside her writings, Sister Faustina also experienced many miraculous phenomena. There are stories of her experiencing hidden stigmata, bilocation, prophecy, and the ability to read into human souls. Despite these occurrences, she maintained that miraculous events were simply “ornaments” for the soul and that her real sanctity came from her deep relationship with Jesus and desire to do God’s will.

After her death at age 33, her writings on Divine Mercy sparked a great movement in the worldwide Catholic church with a strong focus on the Mercy of Christ and how to extend that mercy to others. Saint Pope John Paul II called her “the great apostle of Divine Mercy in our time.” St. Faustina, pray for us!

©LPi

The Perfect Storm

By Colleen Jurkiewicz Dorman

I am writing this on a Saturday morning. Saturdays are my writing days, when my husband takes over the kids and the house and I disappear into the office with an enormous cup of coffee and noise-canceling headphones. Saturdays are sacred — if work can be called sacred.

But Saturday morning is also the only time I’m able to consistently get to confession. Every other time the sacrament is offered in my area during the week, I seem to have unavoidable commitments — but on Saturday morning, all I have is work, and how can I let work come before a sacrament, as much as I might secretly want to?

I’ve spent a good deal of time being bitter about this, because it’s just not convenient, having to carve out time from work to run to the other side of town, especially when I get there and there’s a line. I sit there in the sanctuary, waiting my turn, checking the clock, stewing, fretting. Obsessing over forgetting one of my sins. Thinking of how much work I have when I get home.

Saturday mornings: a perfect storm, I sometimes call it in my head.

I forge ahead, though. I’ve never gotten up and dashed back to my desk. I make it into the confessional and I stammer out my pathetic little list and receive absolution. Then I go before the tabernacle to perform my penance.

It’s while I am kneeling there that it happens. Always. God awakens, and he cries into the depths of my heart: “Quiet! Be still! Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

After teaching all day by the shore of the sea, Jesus asks his disciples to remove him from the crowds. He wants to escape the noise, the clamor, the disquiet. But the clamor follows him, because the world is full of it. Storms crop up wherever we go.

Jesus sleeps through the storm, because he understands what the disciples do not: the storms of the world cannot hurt us. They are only so much noise.

“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” — Mark 4:41

©LPi

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