Tuesday of the 18th
Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of Saint
John Vianney
August 4, 2015 6:30am
Today’s gospel recalls for me an
experience of Saint Francis de Sales.
Francis de Sales lived in the
late 1500’s and first half of the 1600’s in France.
In one of his letters, he recalls
something from the rural village of France.
He says that he often noticed a
woman going across a farmyard to draw water at the well.
Francis also noticed that before
she lifted the full bucket, she would always place a piece of wood into it.
The wood would float on top of
the water.
One day he asked the woman, “Why do you place a piece of wood in the
bucket of water?”
The woman looked surprised and quickly
answered, “Why?
“Well, to keep the water from spilling…to keep it steady.”
Saint Francis de Sales later
wrote a letter to a friend and told this story and added:
“So when your heart is distressed and agitated, put the Cross into its
center to keep it steady.”
Francis’ story and lesson are
appropriate for this morning’s gospel.
Jesus comes to the disciples on
the stormy sea.
After the incident with Peter,
Jesus gets into the boat and what happens?
The wind immediately dies down.
The insight is that where Jesus
is present, or where we are alert and awake and aware of his presence, the
storms of life calm down for us.
So we need to let Jesus and his
cross be with us in our storms.
We need to allow the cross to
remind us that Jesus fully understands our storms.
He himself had to deal with
storms and plenty of hardship.
We need to allow the peace that
Jesus shows in the cross and the love that he has for humanity flow into us and
bring us some calm and inner peace.
We may still have to make our way
through troubled waters, but the Lord’s presence will bring us a certain calm
and companionship as we do that.
He will have an effect similar to
a piece of wood floating of top of the water in a filled bucket.
