Light of the night

Today’s readings: 1 Kings 19, 9.11-13; Rom. 9, 1-5; Matt. 14, 22-33.

Sometimes believing and holding on to the faith has its dramatic side. This happens both on the personal level, as with Elijah and Paul in today’s readings, and on the ecclesial level, as with the disciples on the boat at night battling a heavy sea. In such times, the grounds of belief must be constantly allowed to challenge our religiosity’s fixed assumptions.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in The Wound of Knowledge, writes: “The great­ness of the great Christian saints lies in their readiness to be questioned, judged, stripped naked and left speechless by that which lies at the centre of their faith”. Today’s readings provide us with breath­taking faith experiences by Elijah, Paul and the disciples with Jesus.

Like the disciples in today’s Gospel, the local Church is currently battling heavy seas. One could say this as a dark night for the Church here. But desperate moments in life can prove necessary for authentic spiritual growth and vital for new openings when everything seems to be at a standstill.

In the first reading Elijah was battling the forces of evil represented concretely by King Ahab and his wife Jesabel. That was his dark night of the soul. At that point there was nothing for him to do but to “enter the cave and spend the night in it”.

In like manner, Jesus “after sending the crowds away, went up into the hills by himself to pray”. He needed to cross the river to be alone for some time. Crossing the river here may serve as a powerful metaphor regarding what to do in moments of helplessness. Even Paul, writing to the Romans, confesses that he was at the crossroad of his faith, causing him an endless mental anguish.

If the Church in its dark night needs re-energising, these readings speak loud and clear. But the fixed assumptions of our religiosity may easily hinder us from discerning God’s way of manifesting Himself. The Lord has very strange ways of speaking. Like Elijah, we need to go through a process of unlearning in the grounding of our faith.

Unlearning means letting our­selves be challenged and, as Williams wrote, be stripped naked to explore faith beyond our religio­sity. In the Gospel, Peter thought it was easy to walk on the water as long as Jesus looked on. Little did it cross his mind that it did not depend solely on the strength of Jesus’ word. It involved him as well. Nothing can be taken as a given in faith.

The Lord cannot save us without our personal involvement, St Augustine would say. Perhaps what we really need today are radically new experiences of what prayer is, new paths of exploring our relating with God, and a new facelift in the image of the Church. The new Jerusalem can only be built on the ruins of the old one.

Where faith is concerned, refur­bishment leads nowhere. This explains why words like ‘renewal’ and ‘reform’ sound like hollow buzzwords in our churches. The way forward can’t be discovered except through re-founding, going deep down to the roots of our belief, letting go of assumptions that promise only false security.

Christianity, writes Catholic religious philo­sopher Louis Dupré, has become an historical factor sub­servient to a secular culture, instead of the creative power it once was.

In a world which has become too noisy, it may be difficult for us to feel the ‘gentle breeze’ which even for Elijah was so much in contrast with the usual wind, earthquake and fire where he expected God to manifest Himself. As French Orthodox theologian Olivier Clement put it, “to come to the point where you disbelieve passionately in a certain kind of God may be the most important step you can take in the direction of the true God”.

This is exactly what Elijah went through to rediscover the God he believed in. This is the night when, confused as we may be like the disciples, the Lord himself may come across walking on the waters to call on us “Do not be afraid.”