Today’s reflection is an Ignatian meditation. In an Ignatian meditation, while in prayer you imagine yourself in a Scripture story. While you are in the story, you just live it. Then, afterwards, you reflect on it. Ignatian meditation was developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola in his famous Spiritual Exercises.
Disciple with Jesus Mark 5:21-43
Today I am one of the lesser-known disciples traveling with Jesus as he lives today’s Gospel. This is the conversation going on in my head as I live this day.
“I wonder what today will bring. It’s cool this morning. We came ashore sometime in the night. Once Jesus calmed the storm, it was easy for the fishermen disciples to row us the rest of the way across this small Sea of Galilee. We came ashore and slept on the beach. My mind was spinning as I wrapped my cloak around me. Yesterday Jesus was wonderful as he talked about seeds and how they grow. He’s right! I don’t know what makes a tiny, dry seed turn into a plant. But that’s what happens! I also don’t quite understand how Jesus tied that into the “Kingdom of God.” He explained what he meant by those parables. I get it that he is sowing seeds by teaching. But what is this Kingdom of God he is sowing?
I know what it is in me. It’s a yearning to keep on hearing Jesus and to be with him. To listen. To understand. I can read the Torah and write my name, but my family is poor. I didn’t study beyond that. Somehow, just listening to the parables makes more sense to me on a gut level than even when Jesus explains them. I’m satisfied to just listen and follow.
Or at least I WAS satisfied until that storm last night. In the middle of it, I thought we were going to be thrown overboard. I would have drowned. I’d never faced death NOW before. Was God punishing us for following this itinerant preacher instead staying home and helping the family? I thought maybe so, and so I was afraid my life was going to end in God’s anger.
But no. Jesus didn’t wake up from the rocking of the boat or water splashing on him. But, when one of the other guys woke him up, he just told the waves and wind to stop—and they did! There was an authority in his voice I hadn’t heard before. And he chided us more than he has before. Like we shouldn’t have been scared! Even Peter, Andrew, James, and John, who’ve lived and sailed these waters their whole lives were scared. I was terrified. Now, this morning, I am still wondering, ‘Who is Jesus, anyway?’
Yet somehow, once on shore, I slept until now.
Where’s Jesus? Oh, he’s back in the boat, teaching again, it looks like. Hmm. No breakfast? This is no longer Jewish territory. Will we be able to find something to eat that’s kosher? I’ve never been over here before.
There’s a crowd forming. I guess I’d better see what Jesus is saying today. Some man is talking to him. He’s Jewish, I can tell. He looks troubled. It looks like Jesus is going to follow him. There’s Andrew. I’ll ask him what’s going on.
Andrew says the man is a leader in the synagogue here. His daughter is very sick. He has asked Jesus to go heal her. He is going and wants us to come, too. No breakfast, I guess!
The crowd is making it hard for Jesus to leave. What’s happening? Jesus is turning around, looking around, as if he lost something. What is it? I’m going to get close enough to hear.
Jesus just asked, “Who touched me?” What does he mean? Everybody’s touching him! Oh, now there is an older woman he’s talking to. She’s on her knees. But she’s looking up at him. People are gasping and murmuring. What happened!
I’ll ask Andrew again. He always knows.
A few minutes later….
So Jesus healed a woman without her asking him! She just believed he could. And he did. But even though maybe 50 people were touching him as he made his way through the crowd, Jesus knew that woman was the one he healed. Was she Jewish? I couldn’t tell. She must have been. I heard Jesus say to her, “Your faith has saved you.”
What does that mean? It wasn’t our faith that saved us last night! It was Jesus’ faith—I guess. Because only God could stop the wind and waves. Who is Jesus?
About an hour later…
How can this be? The little girl was dead, laid out. Jesus said, “No, she is just asleep.” She must have been just asleep, yet one of the men told me his wife said she was cold—dead. Who is Jesus?”
Reflection on the Meditation Who is Jesus to me?
I think God led me to pray this way because various events the past few weeks have created a cognitive storm for me. Some of those events are US national in scope. Others are personal. As I sort through thoughts, feelings, concerns, and desires, the question emerges, “Who is Jesus to me?”
I know and believe to the core of my soul that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, consubstantial with the Father, truly present in the Eucharist, and that his death as both God and man made it possible for me to return to a state of imperishability.
But is that knowledge my faith or my religion? Who would Jesus have been to me if I had been in the boat during the storm in last week’s Gospel? If I were walking around Galilee with him, hearing his teaching and witnessing his miracles? If I were the woman healed of her 12-year illness or the parent of the child come back to life in today’s Gospel?
Does what I know of Jesus and God’s Love form my religion or my faith? If it’s faith, this is what the catechism says:
142 By his Revelation, “the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company.” The adequate response to this invitation is faith.
143 By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, “the obedience of faith”.
Faith in God is not like faith in a leader or doctor or the supporting love of family. Faith in God is definitely not like faith in ourselves, that we can cope and carry on.
If we have faith in God, we become disciples—even if everything doesn’t quite make sense—because God is God, Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is God.
True, sometimes it is very hard to tell exactly what God means, even if we are open. We can see God acting, like the disciple in the Ignatian meditation, and not be able to put all the pieces together in a cohesive whole of religion.
Today, it seems to me, faith is that pull from Jesus—a pull that day by day, choice by choice, creates the Kingdom of God within me, then moves me to reach out to share faith that is a way of life.
The source of the faith that emerges is God’s desire that we might all have the abundant life he seeks to give us—the message from Wisdom today. The end of that faith is the propagation of the seeds of the Kingdom of God through the capacity to love that springs from us—the message of 2 Corinthians today. Give me faith, Lord!
Prayer:
Lord, give me a plentitude of Faith. I believe in You. I trust You. But I cannot always understand where and how You are in the world around me. Some days there are great storms. Some days I listen to You, but I don’t understand. Some days You act to heal in ways that defy my understanding.
Be my all and all. Be God to me. Always. You, God, first.
