HOMILY FOR 12TH SUNDAY OF THE ORDINARY TIME – YEAR B
HOMILY FOR 12TH SUNDAY OF THE ORDINARY TIME – YEAR B
HOMILY THEME: FAITH IN THE MIDST OF LIFE’S STORM
BY: Fr Cyril Unachukwu CCE
Job 38: 1 -11, 2 Cor 5: 14 -17, Mark 4: 35–41
The experiences of life could sometimes turnout strange and very turbulent that the reality of destruction becomes very obvious before us. At such moments, faith in God becomes a beacon of sustenance and our hope in the promises of God becomes our very fount of consolation. Truly, at such moments of confusion and despair, only the manifestation of the presence of God changes the whole story, filling our faces once more with the beams of the joy of our salvation and re-affirming our confidence in God’s closeness to us. In our times of troubles, may You oh Lord, never be far away from us; Amen.
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There are moments we mistakenly understand faith in God to be some sort of vaccine that makes us immune from the troubles and challenges of life. Faith in God has never rendered anybody immune from the ups and downs of life. Rather, our profession of faith in God enables us to live through the turbulence of life in the light of salvation. In fact, one of the distinguishing attitudes that helped Job to outlive his period of great loss and tumult was the innermost conviction that God is in-charge of the whole of History. He was certain of the truth that God has absolute overview and control of the events of History; He knows how best to direct His creatures to their self-realization, especially when they abandon themselves to His Wisdom and Power. The ability to abandon oneself to God’s will and purpose summarises the personality of Job, even when it humanly seems absurd and irrational to do so. For this, Job has remained a model for all those who wish to journey with the Lord and who wish to overcome our natural tendency to evaluate and conclude about things under the limitations of our human condition. God’s response to Job in the First Reading of today (Job 38:1,8-11) was borne out of God’s merciful countenance towards Job for his faithfulness and uprightness even in the face of one of the most pitiable situations and horrific losses in the History of Salvation; “from the heart of the tempest the Lord gave Job His answer.” God’s response to Job became the point of his total transformation and surplus regain, in better scales, of all he had lost. We may have things very beautiful and worthwhile at the moment. But we must also recognise that God has much more beautiful things to give us, even in much more superior quality and quantity. God’s gifts and reservoirs of blessings are infinite and inexhaustible. This He manifested in His dealing with Job; this He has manifested in the whole History of Salvation; and this He has manifested to us, and continues to manifest to us, in the most sublime way in the person of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ.
In Christ, we have received access, to an extent that is indescribable, to the blessings and favours of God. The Job-experience of loss and pain is one that is relived in varied forms and degrees by us on daily basis. Luckily for us, we have a superior manifestation of God’s presence amongst us that is absolutely capable of transforming all our setbacks, worries and misfortunes into songs of joy. One trick of the devil is to make us forget that we have God with us; he makes us forget to invoke His assistance. The Disciples of Christ made that experience in the Gospel Reading (Mark 4:35-41), when they taught that all was lost. They taught it was ended and that they were heading to destruction in the sea. But the contrary was actually the case! In that very moment of desolation and despair, Jesus “woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea. Quiet now! Be calm! And the wind dropped, and all was calm again. Then he said to them, why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith? They were filled with awe and said to one another, Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.” When we have Christ, we have everything and we lose nothing positive and good. It is very important to learn to trust God and never to lose heart. There are moments when the turbulence of lack and loss shake us off balance that the perennial and closest presence of God to us seems like an illusion. At such moments, we must learn also to hang on God like Job and to invoke the intervention of Christ like the Apostles because we have Christ with us always. When we have Christ such instances become opportunities for us to walk through the path of renewal in faith, hope and love. This is very true because, in the words of the Second Reading (2 Corinthians 5:14-17), “for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here.” The natural consequence of becoming a new creation in Christ after such experience is recognising much more deeply and convinced that God is bigger than all our troubles and challenges.
Lord God, in the most turbulent moments of our lives, may we never lose sight of Your presence amongst us; may we never be engrossed in the risks around us that we forget to invoke Your help; and when we call to You Lord, may You answer us; Amen.
Happy Sunday
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