Gospel for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Beyond the Storm, His Presence
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew (Mt 14, 22-33)
[After he had fed the people] 22 Then he made the disciples get into the boat and precede him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23 After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When it was evening he was there alone. 24 Meanwhile the boat, already a few miles offshore, was being tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against it. 25 During the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them, walking on the sea. 26 When the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified. “It is a ghost,” they said, and they cried out in fear. 27 At once [Jesus] spoke to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” 28 Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” 29 He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw how [strong] the wind was he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” 31 Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” 32 After they got into the boat, the wind died down. 33 Those who were in the boat did him homage, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”
Father Michele Sciotti's Commentary
Dear brothers and sisters,
Today’s Gospel feels almost like an action movie. Matthew places a sequence of very rapid images before us: Jesus practically forcing the disciples into the boat, Him dismissing the crowds, and then, finally, silence. We see Him climbing back up the mountain, alone, deeply immersed in prayer as evening falls.
But why did the early Church preserve the memory of that night on the lake with such great care? Because in that story, the first Christians saw their own lives reflected as if in a mirror.
Try to imagine the scene: Matthew wrote this Gospel at a time when Jesus was no longer physically on earth. He had taken His leave, ascended to the Father, and pushed the small boat of the Church—with Peter at the helm—into the great sea of history. And after just a few years, that boat suddenly found itself in the middle of a storm. The persecutions in Jerusalem, the martyrdom of Stephen, the threatening waves of Nero in Rome... It was a Church rowing against the wind, tossed about by the waves, and paralyzed by fear. We find an echo of this situation in the letters of Peter: “Do not be surprised that a trial by fire is occurring among you, as if something strange were happening to you” (1 Pet 4:12).
Yet, right in the middle of that darkness, the Gospel shouts a certainty that holds true for us today: the Master is not far away! He has not left us alone to fight the waves. There is a detail that the ancient Fathers of the Church loved to point out: Jesus goes toward them “in the fourth watch of the night.” Do you know what hour that is? It is the exact hour when, some time later, Jesus Himself would rise from the dead. Jesus, therefore, walks on the waters of our despair with the very power of His resurrection.
But we must pay close attention to the secret of not sinking. Peter’s problem was not the waves, but his focus. As long as he looked at Jesus, Peter walked; the moment he looked down, toward his fear of the waves, he began to sink. Peter had to learn the hard way—and he had it clearly written in the Gospel to serve as an example for all of us—that if we rely only on our own strength, the boat of our life will very soon go under.
Today, the scenery has changed: the lake is the entire world and the boat is the Church present everywhere. The state of mind, however, remains the exact same. We often feel that the Master is remote, as if He had stayed on the other shore. Some people today even tell us that we must get used to living “as if God did not exist” (etsi Deus non daretur), pulling the oars in darkness and silence.
But the Gospel does not ask this of us. The Gospel encourages us to bother the Master, to urge Him, to cry out like the apostles: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” We must not do this only for ourselves, but for the whole boat, for the whole Church, so that calm may return and we can confess once again, all together and with renewed energy: “Jesus, You are truly the Son of God, our Lord, our Savior!”
In the first reading, we heard that Elijah encountered God not in the earthquake or the fire, but in a tiny whispering sound. Elijah hid his face to worship Him. We, too, will soon encounter the same Lord in the stillness of the Eucharist.
But unlike Elijah, we do not need to hide our faces. It is He, Jesus, who chose to hide His face under the appearance of bread and wine. He did so not to blind us, but to be able to come close to us, right here where we are. Let us ask Him today that this peaceful presence, which we prayed for in the responsorial psalm, may come deep into our hearts and calm every storm we face.
Praise be to Jesus Christ.