When Storm Clouds Gather

Dear Parishioners,
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Today’s gospel reminds me of an often-painful truth: storms and the suffering that accompanies them are often unavoidable. Suffering is part of life. We get sick, we break our arm, we get stung by a bee. All this to say that God allows suffering. 


In the Psalm, God commands a storm to rise and rattle the sea and its waves. Yet when his people called to him in their distress, he quieted the storm and brought
them to their haven. The same is true for us all. When I suffer, to
what or whom do I turn? The world offers many remedies, some
good and some ill. Yet neither we nor the world and all its powers
are in control of nature, of history. For we are God’s story, we are
his beloved sons and daughters. When we forget our place
thinking the world rests on our shoulders let us remember as God
said to Job in our first reading: “Who shut within doors the sea,
when it burst forth from the womb; when I made the clouds its
garment and thick darkness its swaddling bands?” God created
the world and possesses supreme authority over it. Yet it is not the
same with us. He has given us the freedom of will to choose
(when we face storms, squalls, and any myriad of suffering) to
run to him or to other things. We are his children not his slaves.
We are new creations; from the waters of our baptism, we died
with Christ and share in his life. For us, this is new life, where in the face of sin, suffering, doubt, and fear, we might hold our peace close to Jesus. 


Do we not yet have faith? In the gospel, Jesus was sleeping when the storm came. If we are close to him and seek always the good, we too might rest with him. We need only trust in Jesus and all will be well even in the midst of suffering, pain, disease. This world is not our true home.  

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We must seek Jesus, seek heaven, seek goodness and all virtue so that when he calls us to our true home, we do not say “Who is this who the wind and sea obey?” But rather, “Here I am my
Lord and God. I love you, please, have mercy on me and take me home.”

Siempre Adelante,

Riley Paolella
Parishioner

art above- Rembrandt’s With Jesus in the Storm 

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