There are countless ways of interpreting a story from the Bible, such as the story we have just read. A story of a peaceful journey by boat from one side of the beautiful lake of Galilee to the other which turns into a terrifying storm. Painters have painted it, depicting the terror of the disciples at the wind and waves which threaten to overturn their boat and cause their deaths while Jesus sleeps, seemingly blissfully unaware that anything is wrong. Writers down the ages have written how this storm is symbolic of the storms of life which can batter us as we make our own voyage through life, and even though Jesus seems to be asleep he is really there all the time.
St. Augustine preached a short sermon on this story fifteen hundred years ago, and he has his own characteristic, individual take on the story. Not so much interested in the details or circumstances of the storm, he sees patterns in the story that are emblematic of what goes on in the interior life of the follower of Christ.
Augustine is addressing a question like this: how is it that someone who has had all the blessings, has had the love of God poured into their heart, can actually sin, can actually and knowingly do something to harm someone else; someone who is sailing peacefully through life? It is an important question, because if we don't have some idea of how we sin, we might be inclined to think we don't really sin, and then we will never experience mercy and forgiveness, which is, according to the Pope, the joy of the Gospel.
So the wind, the waves, the sleep of Jesus are now all symbols of what goes on in the Christian's life. And so: "You hear an insult: - That is wind. You get angry, that is a storm. So, when the wind blows, and the storm rises, the boat is in danger: your heart is in danger; your heart is caught in a storm. When you hear the insult you desire revenge. Then you took your revenge, you took pleasure in the hurt of another, you caused shipwreck. Why did this happen? Because Christ is asleep in you. What does that mean? It means you forgot Christ. So wake him up, remember Christ, let him be awake in you, take account of him. What were you after? Revenge. Had it escaped you, how he said while he was being crucified: Father, forgive them for they know not what they do? The one who now sleeps in your heart, himself did not wish for revenge. Wake him up, remember him… And if he is awake in you, you will say to yourself, what type of person am I that I would wish for revenge, that I would be a threat to another human being? And then you draw back from your anger and return to peace of heart. Christ commanded the sea and peace returned.
And what I say about anger, the same applies in all our temptations. Temptation comes, that is wind; disturbance of the heart, that is the storm. Wake Christ up, and let him talk to you. Imitate the wind and the sea: they obeyed their creator."
I suspect that Augustine must be looking into his own heart and his own sin and repentance when he wrote that interpretation of the storm on the Lake of Galilee, because I have rarely come across such an accurate account of how we can do what we know to be harmful or hurtful to others. A temptation, maybe an offensive word from another, and then a darkness of the heart, a desire for revenge, or something harmful in return, and we forget our better selves, the love that is at the root of our hearts, the love poured into us by the Holy Spirit, the very life of Christ himself in us, - and we lash out. It applies in the case of anger, he says, but also in any other temptation to harm or injure others, such as greed or envy: somehow we lose touch with that life in ourselves, that better self which longs for love and goodness, at the root of our soul where we and Christ are one.
But Augustine's message, like the Gospel story, is still one of hope. Christ wakes up. The cure: wake him up! Keep alive, cultivate, remember, practise the love that is in us, that is the better part of us.
"But, since we are human, if the wind drives us, if it influences the movements of our heart, let us not despair: Let us wake him up, so that we can journey on in peace, and arrive safely home."
I opened a book the other day, and found an old card in it that I had left there years ago. It was from an old lady, a widow, who is now dead, thanking me for sending her a Christmas card. The words on the card could almost be said to be over the top. She wrote of the thrill of getting it, the lift to her spirits it had brought her, the happy memories it had brought back,. She concluded with the words, Beannacht De ort a Athair, agus brath Mhuire ort go deo, de ló is d'oíche. Clearly, it had got her at a low moment, and lifted her. My card had become much more than a card, it had hit some spot, and she had heard a very strong message.
And there are moments like that: some small gift, a fussy Ma slipping a bar of chocolate into your pocket lest you become hungry on the journey - later on, on reflection, or out of the blue the memory of it strikes: that little thing can take on the weight of enormous significance, invested with all the care, the unfathomable concern for your well-being that was behind the giving. It hits some spot. It has become a kind of sacrament: an object carrying grace, awakening a response of gratitude or something deeper unnameable, deep down in ourselves.
In the first Reading, we have Elijah, great prophet though he was, at the end of his tether. He wanted no more. "Elijah went into the wilderness, a day's journey, and sitting under a furze bush wished he were dead. "Lord," he said, "I have had enough. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." He was in a bad, very bad place. If someone wants no more, they are in a very lonely place, almost beyond pain but worse. Cut off from all the ties that bind us to life, which are usually ties to other people. In that state of depression he went asleep. Then, we're told, an angel woke him up and told him to eat, and there beside him was a piece of newly-baked bread and a jar of water. Where did they come from? It doesn't say. Very likely it was his servant. But it was an angel that showed them to him, and an angel that told him to "get up and eat or the journey will be too long for you". Telling us, that Elijah, in the depth of his awful loneliness and depression, saw this piece of bread and jar of water, as carrying some enormous message, telling him, not by words but by some insight into the significance of the gift, that he wasn't alone, that he was cared for, and he knew it deep down. It had hit that spot, and he knew that though it was baked by his servant, it was also bread from heaven.
Like the old lady who got the Christmas card, he got a message of deep significance from something simple, and in his case we're told it was the work of the angel that made the difference.
Angels, we were told, are messengers from God. We may think of them as they have been depicted in art, who look like humans but with enormous wings; essentially they are ways that God finds of communicating his love, not in a general way, but in particular circumstances. We may know that God is good, that everything that surrounds us is a gift of God, but that universal truth will often not hit the spot, especially if we are in trouble. We need something more. Something that will speak to this particular here and now, and that is the work of angels, or grace. Usually it will be something or somebody of ordinary life, but the extra that helps it speak to the depth of the heart, that lets us see that "in grief, too, we are wrapped in mercy", that is the work of angels, or grace, or the Spirit. As in the case of Elijah, as we can see from the First Reading, so also, I believe in the case of the old lady and the Christmas card. Both essential: the human gesture or reality, and the extra insight that comes from God.
Now let us look at the Gospel reading. For the last three weeks we have been reading about Bread. First we had the feeding of the multitude with a few loaves. Then we had Jesus trying to bring the people to look beyond the gift of bread to the giver of the bread, to see in the bread a sign of the graciousness of God. Today he tells them: "I am the bread that comes down from heaven". He is trying to tell them that he is the sign of the Father's unreserved gift of love and forgiveness, here and now, for each one of them. To touch their hearts. But they only see what is before their eyes. "How can he say he is the bread from hea ven… we know his father and his mother." Then he tells them: "No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me…" To see the full reality of what Jesus is about, is to see with the eye of the heart, to be open to that extra prompting, to see in him the offer of love and forgiveness of God, not in a general way, but in the here and now. Like the work of the angel in the case of Elijah, but here the gift is God himself; to see it you must be "drawn by the Father".
St. Augustine said: The whole task of life is to cleanse the eye of the heart, so that we may see God. Our faith in Christ the bread of life is not something complete, sealed and there for once and for all. It is more a pattern for the journey, a journey in which we try to be open to the promptings, wherever they come from, in joy or in distress, telling us in ways ever ancient ever new, that God has given himself, to us, for the life of the world.