Gospel [Matt. 14:22-34 (§59)]

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Dear Fathers, brothers and sisters:

In our Gospel reading today we hear the continuation of the story we heard last week where our Lord was performing perhaps His most famous miracle of the Gospel – the feeding of the 5000 from 5 small loaves and 2 fish. We next hear another famous miracle of the Gospel which occurred straight after this, where our Lord walks upon the surface of the water. To interpret the Gospel let us turn to our holy Father, St Theophan the Recluse who comments in his short homily on the second part of our reading today.

And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away.

As we heard from our Gospel reading last Sunday, our Lord dismissed the disciples quickly after this awesome miracle of the feeding of the 5000 and ushered his disciples to get in a boat and to cross the Sea of Galilee. St Nikolai reminded us that He did this as He didn’t want them to become proud at the attention and adulation of the crowds.

And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.

Again we can see here the beauty and depth of our Lord’s relationship with the Father and how He gained so much strength and comfort from these moments in prayer, alone, abiding in the Father.

But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary.

And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.

And so we come to the crux of today’s Gospel reading: the boat that carried the disciples had got into significant difficulties and they must have been in fear of their lives. Yet, right at this moment of darkness, danger and peril, our Lord comes to them. Of course, He could have so easily calmed the waves and the wind from the mountain top where He was praying. However, He wanted not simply to change the weather conditions but to comfort them and console them with physically with His presence. Moreover when He comes to them miraculously on the surface of the water, He also brings them not only His physical presence but a Word of joy and of encouragement: “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.” We can also take from this beautiful story in the Gospel a general lesson of how the Lord sees us amidst our spiritual trials, our spiritual struggles and difficulties in this strange and challenging world of ours. So often, when we are in the midst of temptation and peril we despair, we lose hope. Maybe we even start getting angry at God that we are in this situation in the first place. Maybe we even might start blaspheming or cursing, getting angry and irritable at ourselves, and those around us. At this moment, we can also be assured that the demons, are spiritual adversaries, are trying their hardest to make us to sin more and to despair yet further. Reminding us of the terrible things we may have thought or said, filling us with fear and foreboding about God’s Judgment and Wrath against us. Yet, from this little episode in the Gospel, we can see that even when it may feel that everything is going wrong in our lives, and that we have been abandoned entirely by man and by God, actually, our Lord is near to us, and indeed closer to us in exactly these situations. It is then, when we are in despair, that our Lord comes to us across the choppy waters of our life. Moreover, whatever the demons might say, our Lord doesn’t bring harsh words of wrath and hatred but rather He brings us a Word of love, or joy and consolation: “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.” Again, we need to remind ourselves that whatever the situation, whatever the living hell we might be living through, when we realise that we our Christians, when we realise that our Lord is invisibly with us, together with His Mother, our Guardian Angel and all the saints, we then realise that we are not alone and that we don’t need to be afraid of anything.

And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.

And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.

Now we come to the second part of our Gospel reading with Peter’s characteristically bold and impulsive request to come to Jesus on the water. This decision of Peter showed bravery but also significant faith. Prior to this, the disciples were often just the passive spectators of our Lord’s miracles. With this request, Peter seeks to participate Himself in the miracle to walk on the water. As St Theophan says –

The fact that he decided upon such a singular act, hoping in the Lord, deserves no reprimand otherwise the Lord would not have allowed him to do this,

But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?

But despite a promising and firm start, Peter took his gaze away from Christ, he looked down and then everything suddenly went wrong. As St Theophan says –

he gave himself over to human thoughts: “The wind is strong, the waves are great, and water is not solid” – and this shook loose and weakened the strength of his faith and hope … he broke away from the Lord’s hands and, left to the operation of nature’s laws, began to drown.

But yet again, in his adversity, the Lord is right there and ready to reach out a hand to save us. And thus, as St Theophan goes on to show, from this second part of our Gospel reading further important lessons can be drawn in how we can stand strong, and stay above the waterline of doubt and despair. Essentially, we can see Peter’s decision to ask to come to Jesus, as being how each of us might seek to undertake some spiritual or God-pleasing endeavour. Maybe we might seek to increase the severity or seriousness of our fasting; maybe we might seek to increase the frequency or the consistency of our prayer; maybe we might seek to struggle with one of our passions or faults. Whatever it is we need to keep our gaze fully on Christ, and, most importantly, to persevere: to just keep walking, keep doing the same simple things.

Keep your first state of faith and hope, from which a great virtue is born – patience in doing good, which serves as the basis for a God-pleasing life.

We also must keep looking at things in a spiritual rather than worldly way. As soon as our sight, our way of thinking and seeing lacks Christ, lacks spiritual reality, that is when we can so easily lose our way and fall. As St Theophan says –

The soul is filled with human reasoning about human methods of preserving one’s life and conducting the affairs one has begun. But since human methods always turns out to be powerless, fear enters the soul.

Infact, as soon as we start looking at things in this way, we look at them entirely wrongly. We have a false understanding of ourselves, our own power and agency, and a false sense of what is realistic. I am reminded here of a Word from the Desert Fathers. In the collected Book of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, a great deal of the gathered quotations focus upon the subject of perseverance and patience in spiritual struggle. In many ways, this was what the Fathers of the desert from the hardest – just to keep going in the holy way of life they had begun. There was the continual temptation to flee, to leave their cell, to leave the desert and to return back to the world. After all how could they walk on water? How could they live the angelic life?

An elder said, “We are not progressing because we do not understand our own (small) stature and do not have patience in the work we initiate but desire to acquire virtue effortlessly’

In other words, we want to run on water before we can even walk. We want to have all the perfection of the saints without effort, struggle and trial. But, my dear Father, brothers and sisters, let us listen to St Theophan’s final word in his homily and seek to remember this when we are amidst the choppy  sea of life –

Here, the saint says, is what you must do: if you begin, persevere – chase away troubling thoughts, and be bold in the Lord, Who is close.

Amen.