Homily for Sunday, 18 June 2017‒ Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a; Psalm 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58

What is the Body and Blood of Christ? What do we mean when we speak of the Real Presence of Christ, Eucharist, the Feast of the Lord’s Table or the Lord’s Supper, of Mass, or of communion? These are just a few of the names we give to today’s celebration, officially the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, and to a reality that we Catholics celebrate every Sunday and may celebrate nearly every day of the year.

Also today Bishop Salvatore Matano has declared the beginning of a Year of the Eucharist in the Diocese of Rochester, and so we have not only today to celebrate this reality of many names, but a whole year to celebrate it, through to June 3, 2018, next year’s date of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. And so, as we begin this year-long celebration; our Year of the Eucharist, might it be worthwhile to ask ourselves this question once again: What is it?

“What is it” is the very question that has been asked since the people of Israel, returning home to their land from slavery in Egypt, first asked it. When the people of Israel were hungry in the desert, God sent them a strange, dewy substance to satisfy their hunger. As the people of Israel figured out that they could eat this substance, that it filled them, and that it tasted perhaps better than they would have thought, they looked at it cross-eyed, maybe (parents, you know better than I do) as a picky child eyes something like broccoli, and asked, “Manna”?

Yes, “manna” is actually a question, before it became the name given to this strange, dewy substance God gave the people of Israel in the desert. In the Hebrew of the Book of Deuteronomy from which we hear today, as well as in many other ancient languages of what are now Northeast Africa and the Middle East, “manna” means, “What is it”?

We still ask this question today. We still celebrate, as the people of ancient Israel did, “a food unknown to [our] fathers”; to our ancestors. We call it the Body and Blood of Christ, the Real Presence of Christ, the Eucharist, the Feast of the Lord’s Table, the Lord’s Supper, the Mass, or communion. But might we as well ask, “Manna” ‒ “What is it”?

In his pastoral letter announcing this Year of the Eucharist, which is in the Catholic Courier (I will have a brief further announcement about this letter in a few moments before we leave here today), Bishop Matano laments the “high percentage of Catholics who,” according to polls, “do not understand or who have not been taught” about, or “simply do not believe in” the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In many ways our bishop is right to be concerned about faltering practice and understanding of our faith among so many of our brothers and sisters under his pastoral care in this diocese.

At the same time, though, we are here at this celebration. I am confident that I am speaking in front of people who are here now because we at least recognize that something extraordinary, in fact a miracle, is taking place before our eyes. It is taking place in a way we are able to sense: To see here and soon to taste, touch, and smell in the form of bread and wine from the altar; to hear in the form of one another joining together in worship, from the prayers of our Mass, to the singing of hymns, to the cooing of small children, to perhaps more unexpected sounds that echo through this place. The miracle we witness here is so extraordinary, even though it remains always sensible, that we, like the people of Israel in the time of Moses and people since then, are right to ask an eternal question: “Manna” ‒ “What is it”?

Yet is the answer to this question not given to us in a beautiful way especially in the Word of God we hear this evening [morning] from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians? St. Paul asks, “Brothers and sisters, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ”?

A major difficulty of what we celebrate here is that it is possible for us to place our focus on many different aspects of the celebration. Is the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, the bread and wine on the altar in which Christ miraculously becomes really, truly, and fully present without changing what that bread and wine looks, tastes, smells, and feels like? Is the Eucharist centered on the prayer to the Holy Spirit to “make holy these gifts” of bread and wine, “that they may become the body and blood of [God’s] Son, our Lord Jesus Christ”? Is the Eucharist centered on the whole of the Eucharistic Prayer, which extends from my invitation, “The Lord be with you,” to, “Through him, with him, and in him”… and that I will pray with you in a few moments? Is the Eucharist centered on a second prayer to the Holy Spirit within this Eucharistic Prayer, in which we pray not only that the bread and wine be made holy and transformed to take in the real, true, and full presence of Christ, but that we, too, may be so transformed: “Grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son, and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ”? Is our Eucharist centered on what is on the altar; the whole of this celebration we often call the Mass; the priest who leads the celebration; all of us gathered in community, in communion, with one another?

Let me offer a too-easy answer to the long list of questions I have asked just now: “Yes.” Indeed, the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ we celebrate, is all of this and more. It is no wonder, then, that even the most faithful Catholic Christian might become easily confused by this celebration of many names and many faces. It is no wonder that the question we may be most drawn to ask is, well, then, “What is it”?

What is the Body and Blood of Christ; the Real Presence of Christ; Eucharist; the Feast of the Lord’s Table; the Lord’s Supper; Mass; communion? As I say to children I have taught when they look at me sheepishly, thinking they have asked what they are not sure is the right or on-topic question, “That’s an excellent question”! Our next step with this question about the Eucharist, “Manna ‒ What is it,” though, must be to turn this into no longer a “What” question but a “Who” question: “Who is it”?

And so “Who is it”? In some ways more fully than others, my experience is that most Christians know that Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist and that our salvation, our living “forever” with God, depends on this fact. We know that, as we hear Jesus himself proclaim in our Gospel reading, from John, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life… For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”

“Jesus Christ” is our best answer to our question that has become, “Who is it”? Depending upon how fully some people actually believe Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist or how literally (or not) to interpret his words in our Gospel, some may be confused our outright scandalized in thinking about how Jesus could offer us his body and blood to eat and drink. I go no further, because my understanding here is at its limit.

And yet, I think, what could be even more challenging for us than to believe that Jesus Christ offers himself really, truly, and fully in flesh and blood; all that he is in this celebration in his memory, is to believe that Jesus Christ has chosen to offer himself to our world through us; that we are the first place from which Jesus Christ shows himself to our world really, truly, and fully through our flesh and blood; that we are part of the answer to the question, “Who is it”?

And from the moment we go forth from this celebration; our witness here to a miracle of Christ really, truly, and fully in flesh and blood, we are entrusted with working out together, in communion, in our world by how we act as Christ in our world the answer to our eternal question about our Eucharist: “Who is it”?

Homily for Friday, 9 June 2017– Memorial of St. Ephrem

Readings of the day: Tobit 11:5-17; Psalm 146:1b-2, 6c-7, 8-9a, 9bc-10; Mark 12: 35-37

Friday of the 9th week in Ordinary Time

Has anybody here ever heard something or somebody and been delighted? Perhaps we have been to a great concert, or heard a rousing speech. For me, whenever I am in our St. Kateri Parish rectory at Christ the King, or when I visit St. Kateri School and greet the students in the morning, I hear the squeals of children in the school playground, I exchange high-fives with them at the doors and try to remember as many of their and their parents’ names after two years away now, and I hear and try to answer their often brilliant questions, and maybe try to teach them some French… All this (and children in general; I am also an uncle to a delightful niece, Molly, and nephew, Liam) fills me with special delight! I have enjoyed my two years in Paris, although among a few things I miss about St. Kateri, being with our children and young people are among the most significant.

“The great crowd” who heard Jesus teach “in the temple area,” as we hear in Mark’s Gospel today, had the experience of being delighted: “The great crowd heard this with delight.” What did Jesus say that day “in the temple area” that so delighted the crowd? Let me suggest that what so delighted the crowd who heard Jesus had less to do with what he said than what he, the “Son of David”; the Son of God, did.

The crowd saw and heard something royal from Jesus; something that reminded them of Israel’s great King David, and yet something more. Jesus, drawing upon a title “the scribes” had given him, “Son of David,” recalls David when speaking of himself. The crowd sees and hears that, like David, Jesus has been “inspired by the Holy Spirit.” Jesus’ words and his works have God’s own authority behind them. The God who inspired and gave authority to David’s rule and words gives the same authority to Jesus when he speaks the same words: “The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet.’”

What does Jesus mean when he speaks these words of King David? As in Jesus’ time, perhaps too many people today imagine Jesus, and want him to be, a great military ruler. For too many people, then as now, including too many people in positions of power, to “place [our] enemies under [our] feet” means to crush them by military force or by economic oppression as immediately as possible.

But this is not the way of Jesus or of his kingship. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not the “prosperity gospel,” the might-makes-right gospel, or the gospel of terror and oppression. At best, responding to the violence of an enemy with violence will give us temporary delight, while the enemy actually persists and often more enemies are created through violence.

Jesus’ words and works, even more than those of King David, are experienced with more permanent delight by “the great crowd.” We are still delighted in Jesus today, so much so that we gather here in this space, more than two thousand years after Jesus spoke near the temple, to worship and celebrate him. And yet our mission as Christians is to move from this worship celebration to remind the world authentically of Jesus by our words and works, so that, because of Jesus, our world may delight in us.

Homily for Friday, 17 October 2014– Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch

Friday of the 28th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ephesians 1:11-14; Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 12-13; Luke 12:1-7

What are some things that we fear? When I was a very young boy, I wanted to become a firefighter. There was one problem with this, though: I was afraid of the sound of sirens. So here, a few steps in vocational discernment later, I am a priest and not a firefighter!

I am sure that our fears as we grow; become adults; progress through life become somewhat more complex. Jesus, though, speaks of one basic fear that I wonder if it ever leaves us, no matter how courageous we may be: The fear of death.

Jesus says to his disciples in Luke’s Gospel, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more.” Let us put ourselves in the place of Jesus’ disciples. By this point in Jesus’ public ministry, would they have known clearly that Jesus’ life was going to end in a humiliating death; that of a common criminal on a cross? Would this not have made Jesus’ disciples afraid not only for Jesus’ life but for their own lives?

Perplexingly yet comfortingly, Jesus invites his disciples not to fear death. But he does not entirely dismiss fear, which is natural, human, and sometimes an appropriate reaction to obvious danger. Jesus says this to his disciples after inviting them not to fear either their deaths or his: “Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna.” The significance of Gehenna here is that this was the place outside the city walls of Jerusalem where garbage burned and the poor, the ritually unclean, and the especially wicked were often buried in undignified graves. If there were a hell on earth for anyone living in Israel in Jesus’ time, Gehenna was it. Just the mental image of Gehenna would have struck fear in Jesus’ hearers of today’s Gospel.

Do not fear death, Jesus asks us, but do fear hell. And yet fear hell and the one “who has the power to cast into Gehenna,” into hell, only in the context of God’s love and mercy toward us. Would a loving and merciful God who created us in God’s own image and likeness; next to God in dignity and worth, allow us to be cast into hell easily? I think not.

This does not mean that we test God by acting in ways beneath the worth with which we were created and called as daughters and sons of God. This does not mean that we may not encounter ridicule or, less likely, true persecution and even martyrdom for our faith. As we celebrate today the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, martyred in Rome about one hundred years after Jesus’ time, we recognize that courageous disciples continue to be martyred in our time.

And yet this is not to make us fearful. Do not fear death, Jesus says. Fear hell and the one who can cast us into hell but, more importantly than any fear, trust God who saves; who in Christ will be victorious over the power of hell itself.

Homily for Sunday, 12 October 2014

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

What is so important about clothing: What we wear and how we wear it? Can our clothing not show something about who we are or what we do for a living?

I have been asked a few times by children, including once this week at St. Kateri School, about when priests wear clericals, black pants and shirt with a white Roman collar. A few days after I was ordained a priest, I spoke to students at the high school from which I graduated near Edmonton. The students there were asked to prepare two questions each for me to answer when I spoke in their classrooms. Again, some of the most frequently-asked questions were about when, where, and why I wore blacks and a Roman collar. One student asked, “Father, do you always have to wear priest clothes”?

No, I answered. I do not always have to wear “priest clothes.” I wear clericals when I serve in public as a priest: At Mass or other worship celebration, visiting our school, presenting or speaking as a priest, meeting other priests or the bishop, hearing confessions, making hospital or home visits to the sick, and so on… But I usually do not wear clericals if I am relaxing at home, on vacation, or on a day off. Are there any students here who wear a uniform at school? Is there anybody here who wears a uniform at work? A black shirt with a Roman collar is like my uniform. It shows who I am when I am serving in public as a priest.

And yet when and when not to wear our priestly “uniform” can be unclear, as one of my brother Basilians who teaches in one of our high schools found out the hard way this week. He was on his day off, and so not in his black shirt and Roman collar. He went to run a quick errand at the school where he teaches. As he was leaving the school, he greeted one of his students, who was slow in returning his greeting. When the student finally realized who was greeting her, she exclaimed, “Oh, sorry Father, I didn’t recognize you without your clothes!”

Lightheartedness aside, this is a similar plight to that of the man in today’s Gospel reading. We hear that this man is ordered out of the king’s wedding feast for not wearing the wedding garment given him by the king. “Many are invited but few are chosen,” Jesus’ parable ends. This man is unrecognizable without his clothes, and so cannot remain at the king’s feast.

Might we feel that Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast is a bit harsh? And yet clothing, how and what we wear and when we wear particular kinds of clothing, matters. In the case of the man who is expelled from the king’s wedding feast, we are asked to understand today’s Gospel parable in the social context of Jesus’ first hearers. In Jesus’ time, if somebody were to be invited to a wedding banquet of a rich person, like a king, this person would be given a wedding garment to wear at the feast. Not to wear it would be a great insult to the host! Add to this that, in today’s parable, many had been invited but had “ignored” the invitation to the king’s wedding banquet. One had gone back “to his farm, another to his business.” Others had mistreated and even killed the king’s servants who had been sent to deliver the invitation to the feast. And so more servants are sent, “into the main roads” with more invitations to the feast. A man attends the feast, but without his wedding garment provided to him by the king. He is unrecognizable without his clothes.

This harsh-sounding parable, then, is actually a parable about God’s generosity. God, represented by the king in the parable, has sent servants out “into the main roads”; out to the highways and byways; out to the poor; out to sinners like you and me, with invitations to the feast. Do we accept God’s exceedingly generous invitation to the wedding feast?

For us, the king’s wedding feast has been prepared. This feast is eternal life; the salvation to which we are all invited by God. If we do accept God’s invitation, will we show up for the wedding feast wearing the appropriate clothing for the occasion? Will we clothe ourselves in a way that shows others who we are while also reflecting God’s generosity to our world by the way we live? Will we wear the garment given us by God, our king, out of generosity; a garment we do not deserve but nevertheless a garment of salvation? At the king’s wedding feast, will we be recognizable in our clothes?

When I speak of clothing, I am aware that I am discussing a controversial topic for some of us. Have we not heard the term “Sunday best?” Most if not all of us, I am sure, share a desire that everyone dress reverently for a celebration such as the Mass. After all, our Eucharist is an image; a sacrament of the eternal wedding feast of heaven. But, within reason, one person’s definition of reverence may differ from that of another. We balance reverence for Mass with dressing for the weather. Some of us are wealthier than others, and so can afford fancier clothing than others…

All this is a caution against judging what is in others’ hearts, even reverence or lack thereof for God and God’s house, merely by the way they dress. Appropriate attire is important, but is it not even more important for us to wear the festive clothing that is not visible to our eyes but is recognizable nonetheless: The clothing of kindness; of compassion; of generosity that reflects God’s kindness; compassion; generosity to the world? Do we wear the clothing that invites others to join the king’s wedding feast; that invites our brothers and sisters to think and say: “Here is a Christian; a person of God: kind, compassionate, generous”? Some may even say, “I want to be one of them”; one of us! Visibly but also invisibly, are we recognizable in our clothes; the clothing of God’s wedding feast?

Outside of our Eucharistic celebration and also within it, we are given signs; sacraments of the wedding garment to put on; to be seen for who we are: Christians; a people of a generous God. [Today we will celebrate a baptism after Mass.] At baptism, we wear a baptismal garment that we pray will one day be brought “unstained into the kingdom of heaven.” Our servers and I wear an alb, which reminds us of our baptismal garment. Brides at weddings usually wear a white dress, not so much a sign of purity or virginity as, again, a reminder of baptism and the wedding feast of heaven. The pall over a casket at funerals also hearkens back to baptism and forward to eternal life. Over a priest’s alb and stole at Mass is the colorful chasuble, once again a reminder of the wedding garment to be given us by the king, God, when we enter the eternal feast of heaven.

We have all been called, in the prophet Isaiah’s words, to a feast of rich food and choice wines”; the feast of “the LORD of hosts”; the eternal wedding feast of heaven; a feast, in St. Paul’s words to the Philippians, of God’s “glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” We have been called; invited. Will we be chosen? The king, God, has provided us all with the garment for the wedding feast; a garment with visible; sacramental signs, but also a garment of kindness; compassion; generosity; a garment that shows to our world who we are and who God is. When we enter this wedding feast, God only asks that we be recognizable in our clothes.

Homily for Thursday, 2 October 2014– Memorial of the Guardian Angels

Thursday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Job 19:21-27; Psalm 27:7-8a, 8b-9abc, 13-14; Matthew 18:1-5, 10

This second feast of angels in just a few days, that of the Guardian Angels, may again raise in us these kinds of questions: Who are angels? What is the purpose of angels? Are angels real or are they mythical creatures to which some people hold an outdated or childish belief (have any of us been asked this question)? And why do we have two celebrations of angels in the Church just days apart, first the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and then today the Guardian Angels?

The word “angel” means messenger, and so the angels are God’s messengers. We might find Jesus’ reference to angels in our Gospel reading today to be interesting. Jesus responds to his own disciples’ question, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” by placing a child from the crowd among them. The most humble; those who trust God as a child trusts her or his parents are “the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says. But then Jesus leaves his disciples with this saying: children’s “angels in heaven always look on the face of my heavenly Father.”

Are not the angels in this way like two-way messengers for those who trust in God as a child does its parents and all those who care for her or him; for the humble? On the one hand, guardian angels act as messengers from us to God; as intercessors for us to God. On the other hand, these angels reflect God’s glory to us who trust in God. We will pray to God at the beginning of our Eucharistic Prayer today: “For the honor we pay the angelic creatures… redounds to your own surpassing glory, and by their great dignity and splendor you show how infinitely great you are.”

And so these guardian angels; these two-way messengers both show our dignity as God’s creatures before God and reflect to us God’s greatness. Our belief in angels, then, is not some outdated belief. And not only are there the big-name Archangels like Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael for the bigger jobs, but each of us has a guardian angel for the smaller everyday task of bringing our humble prayers to God and showing us God’s greatness and care for us. Jesus asks us to trust in God’s greatness and care for each of us in the way children do; children whose “angels in heaven always look on the face of [our] heavenly Father.” 

Homily for Sunday, 10 August 2014

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Psalm 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

Who here has ever been awakened at three o’clock in the morning and then has tried in vain to get back to sleep? Perhaps except for those of us who are night shift workers, to be awake at three o’clock in the morning is not usually good. Three o’clock in the morning and those who are awakened at this hour have historically been associated with immoral behaviour, guilt, or (probably closer to the true diagnosis if someone is regularly awake at this time) simply insomnia. A phone call or knock at the door at three o’clock in the morning causes us to worry: Would this not rightly cause us to fear the worst? Often people who are wandering the streets at three o’clock in the morning are up to no good. And if illness or sadness is keeping us up at three o’clock in the morning, is not the illness or sadness usually made worse by not being able to sleep?

Why do I emphasize three o’clock in the morning? What is so remarkable about this time? In our Gospel reading, we hear that the boat in which Jesus’ disciples were encounters a strong headwind and high waves “during the fourth watch of the night,” or at about three o’clock in the morning.

I do not know what Jesus’ disciples were doing in a boat “a few miles offshore” at three o’clock in the morning! All we know from our Gospel reading is that Jesus had left them there while he went to pray alone. Then, in the wee hours of the morning, the disciples in the boat encounter bad weather, and it is at this point when Jesus comes walking toward them on the water…

Having been in the Holy Land; having stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee just last summer, I can relate to the predicament in which Jesus’ disciples must have found themselves that night in the boat. For what is not a very large lake, the Sea of Galilee is renowned for rapid changes in weather. In seemingly just a few minutes, the wind can whip calm water up into white-capped waves, as I saw on the day I visited the Sea of Galilee. This Sea of Galilee brought life and a sufficient living from its abundant fish; it could also bring death and destruction if one were caught out on it when the weather changed as quickly as it does there. And so we can empathize with Jesus’ disciples fear when the sea turned stormy the night Jesus walked toward them on water at three o’clock in the morning.

What about the story of Elijah that we hear in our first reading? Elijah, too, was experiencing fear for his life. He had just killed the false prophets of the false gods worshipped by Jezebel, the wife of Israel’s King Ahab. Jezebel wants Elijah killed in turn, and so Elijah escapes to a cave on Mount Horeb where, in fear and despair for his life, he waits for God. And Elijah encounters God on Horeb, but not as Elijah would have expected to encounter God.

I ask if, in his fear and despair, Elijah might have thought: Maybe a rock-crushing wind would not be such a bad idea; or maybe an earthquake; or maybe a fire… “God, I am in such deep despair as not to want to live,” Elijah might have prayed. A few verses earlier in 1 Kings, Elijah makes precisely this prayer: “Enough, LORD! Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” Can we relate, perhaps if we have known anyone to be in such deep distress as to despair of life itself, or if some of us have experienced this despair or depression ourselves?

God, though, encourages Elijah; calls him forth from the cave: God calls Elijah forth not from a strong wind; not from an earthquake; not from a fire, but with “a tiny whispering sound.” In the depths of his despair and fear, perhaps at three o’clock in the morning when Elijah could not sleep (although we cannot know from our first reading at what time of day Elijah encountered God on Horeb), Elijah encounters the powerful gentleness of God. Elijah encounters God as a calm whisper, as if to say quietly, “I have a purpose for you yet. Entrust your life to me and be my prophet. All will be well.”

Parents with small children: Have you ever consoled your children when they could not sleep at night by cradling them in your arms and whispering into their ears? Often, when I am presiding at Mass, I look out and see parents whispering to their children to keep them calm. I see children whisper back to their parents, and then occasionally look up at me with a facial expression of, “Oops! Father sees me talking during Mass.” I have to smile at these moments. These whispered conversations between parents and children, whether at Mass or at three o’clock in the morning when the children cannot sleep: This is how God speaks with us, I am sure.

Our God is not in the wind, in the earthquake, or in the fire. Our God is in the silence; in the consoling whispered conversations between parents and children. Never is God more powerful than in God’s gentleness: “I have a purpose for you yet. Trust in me. All will be well.”

This is the gentleness with which God encounters Elijah. And this is the gentleness with which Jesus encounters his disciples at three o’clock in the morning, quietly walking toward them on water: “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”

To his credit, Peter recognizes God’s gentle presence in Jesus walking on the water. Peter is open to being taught this way of gentleness; this way of trust in God: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” And Jesus says to Peter, “Come.” Jesus not only walks gently toward his disciples on water; not only calms our storms of weak faith; weak trust, but calls us to walk on water as he does, with whatever “little faith” we already have. Jesus calls us to encounter one another; to serve one another; to love one another; to encourage and to console one another with God-like gentleness. And when we fail; when we are sinking; when we sin, Jesus stretches out a hand to save us: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt”?

When we despair; when we are sad; when we are unsure of God’s presence in our lives; when we experience sometimes sudden storms in our lives or relationships; when it is three o’clock in the morning and we cannot sleep, God meets us in a calm whisper. God whispers to us, as a parent to a child: “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” When we call back to God, in the words of St. Peter, “Lord, save me,” we can be sure that God hears us and whispers back: “I am not in the wind. I am not in the storm at sea. I am not in the earthquake. I am not in the fire. I am not in whatever is keeping you awake at three o’clock in the morning. I am in the ‘tiny whispering sound’ that you hear if you listen carefully. I have a purpose for you, my beloved. Trust in me. All will be well.”