November 20, 2021

I’m on a boat.  In the middle of choppy waters.  No land in sight.  I look to my feet.  Slowly rising waters.  How will I survive?  Worry, fear, anxiety, helplessness, paralysis, inactivity, silence.  I’m on a boat.  Perhaps, this describes the experience of being human with our many vulnerabilities and fragilities.  Perhaps this is how Jesus felt in the desert, in the garden and on the cross, attacked as he was from every side.  Perhaps this is why the Church, in her wisdom, invites us to pray these words as our salvation takes root on Good Friday:  “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.  I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me” (Ps 69:1-3).  We should not be naïve about this journey, however, as, indeed, our boats will sink and we will be submerged.  But this is precisely where the Good News begins.  Jesus allows his boat, punctured and wounded as it was, to go under (cf. Jn 2:19-22), yet God’s love was more pervasive than the waters, more enduring than the holes and more powerful than the seemingly definitive death he experienced.  Ours is simply to permit Jesus to enter into our boats (cf. Lk 5:3) and trust in his resurrection.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.