Sunday June 23 2024
12nd Sunday During the Year – Year B

1rd reading: Job 38,1.8-11
Psalm: 106 (107), 21a.22a.24, 25-26a.27b, 28-29, 30-31
2nd reading: 2 Corinthians 5,14-17
Gospel: Mark 4, 35-41

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“Christ died for all so that the living would no longer have their lives centered on themselves, but on him, who died and rose again for them. » Echoing this affirmation of Saint Paul, the first words of the first encyclical of Pope Saint John Paul II were the following: The redeemer of man, Christ, is the center of the cosmos and of history. (Redemptor Hominis §1)

Is he the center of my story and how can I welcome Jesus more as the center of my story, of our story? 

The Holy Spirit given to us never ceases to bear witness to Christ within ourselves. And this is why it is good and necessary for us to constantly read and reread the Gospels so that the Holy Spirit can truly help us discover the one who is at the center, and on whom we must learn to center ourselves. 

But this relationship with Christ is a relationship which is not easy, which requires deciphering, because Jesus is not at the end of our five senses. We do not see it, we do not touch it; it is by faith that we have access to him. Faith, however, opens spiritual senses: through faith, we can contemplate Jesus by meditating on the Gospels, we can hear his words, we can let ourselves be touched by him in the sacraments of the Church. 

And if the Lord is alive, resurrected, he is a free man who joins us in his freedom. Jesus is not at our disposal: he is the one who leads us. In the Gospel, Saint Mark tells us that the disciples take Jesus " As he is " in the boat. Why this precision “as it is”? I am attempting an interpretation: it is for us to welcome Jesus as he is described to us, as he is in himself. We all have the temptation, precisely because Jesus is not at the end of our five senses, to create a Jesus that suits us. In the Gospel of Saint Mark, the first word a man addresses to Jesus is the following: What do you want from us, Jesus of Nazareth have you come to destroy us? (Mk 1,24:XNUMX). Jesus reveals that the man who says this is possessed by an unclean spirit, and Jesus is going to cast out this unclean spirit. Now, this impure spirit is likely to also make its home in us and, sometimes, we can think the same thing: what do you want from us, Jesus of Nazareth have you come to destroy us? It is then that we must allow ourselves to be stripped of beforehand that we can have about Jesus, and return to the Gospel so that the Holy Spirit reveals to us who Jesus really is, so that we know him “as he is”.

Why did Jesus fall asleep in the middle of the storm? Because if you have read the first chapter, especially verse 35, you remember that Jesus gets up well before dawn to go and pray in the mountain. He is not a superman: like us, he needs several hours of sleep and if he does not get his fill during the night, he recovers during the day. And so he sleeps in the boat. This theme of Jesus sleeping is very dear to Saint Thérèse. We find several mentions in Thérèse's writings about Jesus sleeping... When she recounts her childhood and adolescence, she evokes the Christmas of 1887, a year after her conversion, this Christmas when she would have hoped to already be in Carmel ; she will return there three months later. When she returns to her room, I read it:

I found in my room, in the middle of a charming pool, a small ship which carried little Jesus sleeping with a little ball next to Him, on the white sail Céline had written these words: “I sleep but my heart is awake » and on the ship this single word: “Abandon!” ".

Ms A 68r

It was Céline who had prepared this gift for him; it can be seen at the memorial next to the Carmel. This already theme of Jesus who sleeps in the boat, and therefore who is not available, but who is there... with this interpretation of this word, from the Song of Songs - "I sleep, but my heart watches" - which is attributed not to the one who prays, but to Jesus himself; on the sail, the word abandonment, abandonment to Jesus who sleeps.

Later in the manuscript Thérèse returns to this theme regarding the retirement which precedes her profession. She says this:

“The retirement which preceded my profession was far from bringing me consolation, the most absolute aridity and almost abandonment were my share.”

Hear this: I feel abandoned by Jesus. 

“Jesus slept as always in my little basket; ah!! I see that souls rarely let Him sleep peacefully within them. Jesus is so tired of always making expenses and advances that He hastens to take advantage of the rest that I offer Him.”

Thérèse has such confidence in Jesus that she is not offended by Jesus' silence, that she does not curse Jesus who does not answer her, but that she contemplates him sleeping and that she finds joy there that Jesus Thérèse loves her so much that he has the freedom to fall asleep in her house.

I return to Thérèse’s text:

“He will probably not wake up before my great retreat from eternity, but instead of causing me pain it gives me extreme pleasure…” Ms A 75v

“Really I am far from being a saint, that alone is proof; I should, instead of rejoicing at my dryness, attribute it to my lack of fervor and fidelity, I should be sorry for sleeping (for 7 years) during my prayers and my thanksgivings; well, I'm not sorry... I think that little children please their parents as much when they're asleep as when they're awake, I think that to carry out operations, doctors [76r] put their patients to sleep. Finally I think that: “The Lord sees our fragility, may He remember that we are only dust”.” Ms A 75v-76r

This confidence in Jesus who sleeps even in the midst of trials, this confidence that she can in turn fall asleep with Jesus...

In a letter to Sister Agnès (her sister Pauline), she says:

Since Jesus wants to sleep why should I stop him? I'm so happy that he doesn't shy away from me, he shows me that I'm not a stranger by treating me like this, because I assure you that he doesn't charge any money to talk to me!…

LT 074 – To Sister Agnès of Jesus – January 6, 1889

In her prayers, Thérèse is before Jesus who seems to be sleeping, silent, but this does not discourage her from constantly meditating on the Holy Scriptures and in particular the Gospel; and at times other than prayer, the Holy Spirit will draw on this memory that Thérèse has nourished from the Holy Scriptures to make her hear what the Lord wants her to hear. Too often we want the Lord to do what we want. Too often, we reverse the request of the Our Father by praying, without realizing it: MY will be done; too often we lack confidence, thinking that God does not hear us, that Jesus does not listen to us, that God does not answer us. We are wrong... How could such a good Father, how could a Savior who has done so much foolishness for us, not hear our prayer, not hear our cries? But he responds to it in his own way. And when we suspect God of deafness, when we suspect God of guilty muteness, in fact, we close our hearts to what the Lord wants us to hear. 

Look at how Thérèse discovers the love that Jesus has for her by the simple fact that, at her house, he can sleep. And Thérèse teaches others to enter into this logic. She is going to write her sister Céline a letter which is much too long to quote here, the letter 144 which I invite you to read in full. I read a few lines of it, she said to her sister: Jesus […] is so tired!… His divine feet have grown tired of pursuing sinners, and in Céline's basket Jesus is resting so gently. The apostles had given him a pillow. The gospel tells us this particularity. But in the little boat of his darling wife NS finds another much softer pillow. It is the heart of Céline, there He forgets everything, He is at home... It is not a stone which supports his divine head (this stone after which He sighed during his mortal life), it is a heart of child, a wife's heart. Oh how happy Jesus is!

Yes brothers and sisters, with the readings given to us this Sunday, let us be encouraged in our desire to welcome Jesus into our lives, to make him the center of our existence.

Let us completely renounce doubting his love for us, doubting his presence in us. And let us also know, like Thérèse, welcome his silence, welcome his silent presence and join him in this silence. Those among you who had the grace to be parents and have grandchildren, loved being next to your infant when he slept; and this sleeping child was not an absence, it was on the contrary a blessed presence.

May Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus teach us to let ourselves be joined by this sweet presence of the Savior. 

Amen