This Sunday brings to us the powerful story of the calming of the sea. In my life I visited twice the Holy Land and the Lake of Galilee. On both occasions I had a chance to enjoy a ride on the lake, to contemplate the beautiful landscape of Galilee and to see the places that we know from the Bible. What always impressed me, was the strength of the wind that we felt during the boat rides on those sunny summer afternoons. Sometimes I wonder what must happen to the lake when it is struck by the storm.

The words of Jesus addressed his disciples: “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” sound like an irony to us. For us these men who have left everything: their homes, families, businesses, their own lives to follow this itinerant rabbi must have had a lot of faith to do such things. And yet, in the course of the gospel Jesus and the circumstances will bring to the light something else—their lack of faith. In front of the power of nature, these men—some of them were fishermen—responded with panic and fear. That shouldn’t surprise us. How many times we reacted in a similar way, not just in front of natural forces, but once confronted by the unpredictability of life. When the solid ground beneath the feet is gone, we fall into the abyss of our insecurities and that is exactly what terrifies us. For the disciples Jesus sleeping at the stern seems to be unconcerned to their plot. And yet he is the only one who has all the forces of the world under his control. The disciples will have to discover this truth step by step.

We are like the disciples who we were convinced that they had faith, who thought they knew who Jesus was. And yet again and again the storms of our lives prove the opposite. In moments like these, like the disciples we are think that God doesn’t take care of us, that Jesus is indifferent to our lives, that we are alone in this world to cope with our problems.

The gospel reading of the previous Sunday concluded that Jesus explained the parables to his disciples in private. To come to know Jesus, to become his disciples it is not enough to listen to him in the crowd, we need to stay with him in an intimate relationship of love. We need faith that is able to save us and give us peace when the boat of our lives is tossed by the storm. If we discover that we lack such faith, perhaps it is so because we have left Jesus asleep in our hearts. Then our lives lose direction, purpose and meaning. That is why we need to invite Jesus with us to the boats of our lives and wake him up with the persistent prayer. Only this way, we will be able to come know the power of his love and whom he truly is.