In the face of tempests

“Quiet! Be still!” or, to translate the Spanish over-literally “Shut up! Calm yourself!”

Mark 4, 39

This Sunday’s reading – Jesus calming the waves – is one of my favorites. It’s also one I really need to take to heart these days.

It’s been a had month for me. In late May I had a bad bout of diarrhea – mal de mayo they call it hear. A lot of people get sick I May when the rains begin and the water is more contaminated than usual. I don’t know how I got sick, but it has stuck on for a little more than a month with bouts of diarrhea and general stomach upset. I jokingly say that I have the May sickness in June.

It’s also been a time when I have been re-evaluating my time in Caritas. I don’t always feel that I have enough to do and especially that this is the best use of my gifts. At some times I really feel useful – this week I interviewed 10 people for a project on maternal health in the nearby department of Ocotopeque and I took part in the closing session for the training session for those in the project here in Copán. I also have four funding proposals nearly finished and hope to send them out in the next two weeks. But I wonder if this is really what I should be doing now. I’ve talked with Padre Efraín the director and there may be few changes; most of all, I’m hoping that I can have a hand in drafting an agriculture proposal. But we shall see. In the meantime, I’ll continue to help at Caritas.

And so the tempest that the apostles experienced on that sea with Jesus finds an echo in my heart.

A number of years ago Father Dries Van Ootegem, a Belgian priest friend, sent me a card with a photo of a miniature from a monastery on an island in Switzerland. What is unique about the miniature is that there are two images of Jesus - he is asleep and he is standing, calming the waves.


What this has meant to me is that I need to remember that Christ is present with us whether it is stormy or calm. I tend to forget the presence of Christ in the storm.

And so this reading deeply affects me today – in the midst of my little ‘tempests in a tea pot.”

And this commentary by Father John F. Kavanaugh, S.J., touches me:

Our faith is not a guarantee that we will not go under. But it is a promise that, even if we nearly drown, Jesus will be with us. Not every storm of ours is miraculously silenced before his command, but all can be transformed by the abiding presence of love that disarms all fear.

John F. Kavanaugh, S.J., The Word Encountered, pp. 80-81

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After writing these words I went off to Sunday Mass at St. Martin’ de Porres Church in the neighborhood. There Padre Fausto Milla spoke strongly and at length on the current political crisis here.

On Friday the Honduran bishops’ conference released a statement that indicated their deep concern for the future of Honduras. They wrote, in part,

The current political juncture which has been produced by the internal elections [primaries] of the political parties, the election of the Supreme Court of Justice, the naming of the Attorney General of the Republic, the rumors of a coup d’etat and the preparation for the [June 28] survey about a fourth ballot [whether to have a ballot question in November over naming a new Constitutional Assembly to rewrite the Constitution] have produced in us a profound preoccupation over the divisions and the polarization of forces which are sharpening every day in our society.

The full text in Spanish can be found at http://www.zenit.org/article-31627?l=spanish