Twelfth Sunday of Year B - 21st June 2009

Can We Trust?

In the first reading, Job had a big question to ask God. He wanted to know why he had to suffer: why did God send so many calamities his way? Towards the end of the book, he receives his answer. It wasn't at all what he expected. From the heart of a tempest God spoke to him. He reminded Job how little he, and all humans, really know. For instance, he asked Job, "Who shut the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?" Of course Job knew that God had done so, but Job didn't have a clue how God did it. If God acted so wisely and powerfully, surely Job ought to trust God.

The same message is given to the apostles. They are caught in the eye of the sudden storm. They panic. And what is Jesus doing? Nothing: He's fast asleep in the stern of the boat.

When they wake him up, they complain, "Do you not care that we are perishing?" Well, what did they expect? He's not a sailor; they are. But once he's awake, he stops the wind, stills the storm, and calms the waves. That was the biggest surprise of the day, but there was more to come. Now it's his turn to challenge them: "Why did you wake me up?" He wonders. "What's your problem? Why are you terrified? Do you really think anything could happen to you while I am with you? Have you no faith?"

Situations of suffering on a vast scale like Auschwitz, or the Tsunami, do make us ask, "Where is God?" So too can individual tragedies. There is one place, though, where we can always find God, and it is there in front of us. In every Catholic home there is, or should be, a crucifix. Christ hung on the cross to show us that God shares with us the human condition in all its frailty. This is not an explanation of why evil can exist when there is a God of love, but it is an answer to our questions. God is with us.

In his personal problems, Cardinal Newman prayed as follows. Perhaps we could make it our own.

"God has not created me for naught... Therefore I will trust him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness my sickness may serve him. In perplexity, my perplexity may serve him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what he is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirit sink, hide my future from me. Still he knows what he is about."