A better insurance policy

Today's episode deals with the appearance of Our Lord to his disciples while they were going through a terrible storm on the Lake of Genezareth. We presume that they were good swimmers, as I suppose most fishermen should be. And yet they became terrified and thought they were sinking.

Their fear became even greater when they saw Jesus walking towards them over the surface of the sea. They even thought he was a ghost. All of a sudden the sea had become calm. But Jesus said to them: "Take courage! It's me. Do not be afraid."

We all go through many storms in our lives. The loss of a loved one. A serious illness striking one of our dear ones or even our own selves. Difficulties and contrasts on our place of work, or the loss of a job. The list could become much longer.

Besides the physical pain or mental anguish they cause us, all difficult moments in our life can very easily make us doubt the existence of a loving Father in Heaven such as Jesus has made him known to us.

Our Lord's words to Peter, which were also meant for the other disciples who were on the same boat, were: "Why have you doubted, man of little faith?" The source of our unhappiness, many times, is our lack of faith.

This is also true in regard to many situations in the course of our life: unless we have enough faith in the persons we meet or work with, in our friends and neighbours, our life would become a veritable burden; and this would be all the more so if we lacked faith in our own selves.

But it is true most of all in our spiritual life. If love of God and neighbour is the motor that drives us forward, faith is the compass which gives us courage and keeps us moving in the right direction. But faith too needs to be nourished and to get stronger through prayerful reflection on God's infinite love and goodness for each one of us, His children.

The man of today as we see around us and as we watch every day on our TV screens is the "man of little faith" whom Jesus must have had in mind when he rebuked Peter and his friends for their lack of faith. People today do have faith; but it is very often a faith in the wrong thing. They may shop for the best insurance available to hold on to the things that are dear to them, including their own health and property.

All this is praiseworthy and deserves to be recommended. But many of us, it seems, are unaware of the availability of an insurance that will guarantee our own happiness here on earth and our eternal salvation. "What does it profit a man," Jesus once said, "if he gains the whole world and then loses his soul?"

As St Augustine has said: "Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe." And as a more recent writer put it: "Faith makes the uplook good, the outlook bright, the inlook favourable, and the future glorious."

Like Our Lord's disciples, we humans are all on the same boat, and from time to time it happens that our spiritual boat too begins to stagger, and we become afraid. All we need will be to look not for a ghost, or the assurance of charlatan fortune-teller, but for Jesus, provided we sincerely try to focus on him with the lens of our faith. We surely cannot miss him, so long as the flame of our love is still bright and kept burning by our prayer.