Sermon of Father Richard Cipolla
Epiphany IV, St Emery’s 2023
From the gospel according to St Matthew: Lord, save, we are perishing.
The Sundays after Epiphany in the classical Roman rite are all little epiphanies: they
are all about the manifestation of Christ, the answer to the question: “who is this
man Jesus?” Many of the post-Epiphany gospels are miracle stories, beginning with
the first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana, and today with the stilling of the
storm. “What sort of man is this,” ask the disciples, “that even winds and sea obey
him?” The answer is of course comes from faith: He is the One through who all
things were created, the Word of God in the flesh. The winds and waves recognize
him as their Lord and Master. And they obey.
But the Church Fathers understood this gospel as also referring to the Church. For
the people in that boat define the Church: Jesus and the apostles. When he got into
the boat, his disciples followed him. These men, the twelve, follow Christ into his
Body which is the Church, they who become and are the pillars, the foundation of
the Church. But they follow him not into some mythical paradise nor into an early
version of the Love Boat nor into a religious hot house peopled with exotic orchids.
They follow him into that place in which He dwells, where his presence is made
manifest, where his power and truth reside, the Church. But this place which is the
Church has a real grounding in this world, the Church militant, no pie in the sky
business here, in the world, with all that means. And what that means is that the
Church in the world has always been, is being and always will be tossed about by the
fierce storms which naturally occur in a fallen world, a fallen universe.
The storm comes up, the waves are breaking over the boat, and Jesus is sleeping.
Sound asleep. And what do the disciples shout: “Lord, save, we are perishing.” In the
Greek, Κυριε, συσον, απολλυμεθα. You notice the staccato in this prayer. If I were
teaching this to my Classics students I would point out what is known as
“asyndeton”, the lack of connectives between words, showing deep emotion. You
notice that they do not say, “save us, “ but just “save”. Their fear goes beyond
themselves. Their fear is grounded in that primal fear which is the fear of extinction,
of eternal death. That verb συσο is sued especially with regard to death and
salvation. Their cry is not to be delivered from the storm. It is much deeper than
that. Their cry is to God, to save them in the deepest sense, their cry is the cry of
homo religiosus throughout history, echoed in the Kyrie eleison of the Mass, the cry
of those who know the terrible danger surrounding them, those who know their
powerlessness in the face of the storm trying impersonally to kill them. Do we any
longer understand this fear, or have we in this therapeutic age so buried it under
pyschobabble and feel-good religion so that like those in Brave New World we go
through life stoned on the fakery of soma. And have we buried it so deeply that we
have forgotten what the purpose of the Catholic faith is, namely, salvation?
And they went and woke him, saying: “Lord, save, we are perishing!” They got it
right They were perishing. And Jesus says to them: “Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?” Is this a nice response in the situation? Is this caring, is it loving, does
it show understanding, as these terms are now used? In this time of trial, this time
of danger, this time of violence, is this not a time for soothing words, for words of
comfort, for words of assurance? Shouldn’t Jesus have whipped out his guitar and
started singing “I the Lord of sea and sky” and “be not afraid” and helped them
through the marvels of sentimentality to deny the danger they were in? Well, he did
not. He rebuked them for their lack of faith. They did not really know who he was.
They really did not believe. And who could blame them, for he did not look like the
typical Word of God through whom all things were made. And then Jesus stands up
in the boat and rebukes the wind and the waves. And there was a great calm. But
that calm was only temporary. For he who rebuked the disciples and the wind and
the waves would face the ultimate storm of the Cross. And those men in that boat
would go on to face their own storms, to understand as they were crucified upside
down or on an X cross or flayed alive, what is means to be not afraid, what it means
to trust and to know and to have faith.
But we cannot end this here, for the proclamation of the Gospel is always meant for
us in this time and place. The proclamation of the Gospel at Mass is not a history
lesson, a reading about former times, nor is it a religious reading for the edification
of the people. It is the sounding out of the Good News, and it is directed to us in this
time and place in the year of our Lord 2023, no Common Era here, for there is
nothing common about time after God becomes flesh. So we hear this gospel today
to remind of the storm that surrounds us and the real danger we face. To read most
Catholic periodicals, especially the diocesan types, we are sailing on a glassy sea,
perhaps with a few choppy areas, but it’s onward and upward and forward and full
steam ahead. What if the world is going to hell? We are safe on the Boat leading to
the Big Palace in the Sky beyond the sunset. We have the Magic; we have the
Sacraments, we have the Faith, we have the Truth. And so we are all bound for the
Promised Land.
But this gospel says to us: wake up! And this wake-up is not the disciples in the boat
telling Jesus to wake up. It is Jesus who says to us today: Wake up and look at the
real situation. There is a storm, there are high waves. There is a storm raging in the
world, a world that has adopted the culture of death that threatens not only the
extinction of humanity but also the extinction of what it means to be human. The
world has replaced the imago Dei, the image of God, with the imago sui, the image of
the autonomous, self-referential self and has unleashed a storm growing in its fury
against those who continue to believe in the intrinsic relationship between the
creature and his Creator and in the Laws of the Creator. The recent past shows a
Church in which those in charge and whose who follow are happy that Jesus is
asleep in the boat of the Church, for if he is asleep he cannot interfere with their
accommodation to the world, the world as it appears in the gospel of St John, the
world inexorably opposed to God and his Truth. We used to say that prayer for the
safety of the Church every day after Low Mass. We said similar prayers every
Sunday as one of the Collects of the Mass. That practice stopped when the Church foolishly assumed that there was no longer any danger to the Church from the world, and specifically, from the State.
Those who know Western history know of the succession of attempts of the State to
beat the Church into submission to its power. Here we mention the names of
Thomas Becket, Thomas More, the Carmelites guillotined in the French Revolution,
the many priests, religious and lay people in the terrible Spanish Civil War, those
who perished in the persecutions in Mexico in the last century, the Christians among
the millions of Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis, the Christians who died
in the Soviet labor camps, , and those who are being killed at this very time in places
all over the world because they are Christian and are seen as a threat to the power
of the State. All these are martyrs, killed by those whose hatred for the Church was
and is fed by the lust for power and the unbridled self.
The storm, my friends, is very real. And it is as vital as it has ever been in the history
of the Church that those who lead the Church, the Pope, our bishops, our priests and
deacons, are in shape to do what has to be done: to proclaim the truth of the terrible
danger of the storm and the truth of God’s love for all in Jesus Christ which alone can
save us from destruction. But how are they going to get into spiritual shape?
Obviously, from the evidence of the current situation in Rome, not on their own
power. Archbishop Fulton Sheen said: “Who is going to save our Church? Not our
bishops, not our priests, not our religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the
minds, the eyes, the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests
act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and your religious act like religious”.
The times demand holiness, a laity who practice holiness in their lives and demand
it also of their bishops and priests; a laity who refuse sermons full of the pablum of
sentimental pietism and instead insist on being challenged intellectually and
spiritually by the preaching of the Word; a laity that is educated intellectually and
that can defend the Catholic faith in a reasonable and happy when called to do so in
the secularized world in which we live; a laity that demands the holiness of the
Sacred Liturgy, where there is reverence, where there is awe, where there is silence,
where the heart of the matter is Sacrifice. That is what is needed, my friends: no
more and no less.
