Sunday 19A, 2008
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We have seen children jumping up-and-down shouting
‘me too, let me try it too’.
It seems to me that Peter was doing
the same thing.
He saw Jesus doing the extraordinary thing
of standing and walking on the surface of the lake,
even making it look easy and he wanted to do the same.
He certainly retained
a childlike, spontaneous enthusiasm for adventure.
Before we look at what happened to Peter in more detail we may wonder what Jesus was trying to do by walking on the lake.
He was not in the habit of performing miracles just for the sake of it.
So why did he frighten his disciples by walking on the stormy lake in the night?
In last week’s gospel, we heard what went before this event. Jesus received the tragic news of the death of John the Baptist and immediately led his group to a lonely place where they could be by themselves. They wanted to discuss, to grieve, to collect themselves and to pray. However, the crowds found them and interrupted them. After teaching them, healing their sick and feeding them Jesus sent the people away and tried again to be by himself and pray while the disciples were by themselves in the boat. Then Jesus went to catch up with the boat walking on the water.
The imitation of Jesus is what we are called to do
but let us not pursue the spectacular and dramatic things
but the character changing ones like being gentle and humble of heart,
always ready to be of service, to give all we can.
Peter’s desire and attempt at imitating Jesus brings to mind prudence, one of the four cardinal virtues.
Peter’s faith in Jesus did not go deep enough and so his faith could not sustain him in this adventure – he was sinking. Prudence dictates that we should think carefully before we attempt to do something for which we are wholly unsuited.
Jesus said that we had faith as little as a mustard seed we could move mountains and – presumably walk on water as well.
Yet let us use our faith to achieve holiness in our ordinary life so that we may be called holy people.
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