Morning Devotion for Lent
Monday, March 7, 2022
The Invitatory
Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
Amen.
The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.
Reading: Mark 4:35-41
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
Meditation – Michael Palmisano
Do you hear the echoes of another biblical story here? Remember Jonah, the man who fled from God and boarded a boat in fear? Jonah, the man who was found asleep while a great storm threatened that same ship and its crew? However, unlike today’s story with Jesus and the disciples, Jonah’s storm ceases in a much more peculiar manner. When the crew mates came to Jonah and asked for his intervention and mediation to the Lord, he responded: “Throw me overboard.” As soon as Jonah was tossed overboard and immersed by the seas, the storm had miraculously come to a dead calm. The nonbelieving crew’s response? They began to fear the God of Israel and made sacrifices to Him.
The parallels to Jesus in the boat are plain but the great theological import in today’s gospel comes to us in how the stories diverge. In this nautical story Jesus did not need to be sacrificed to the seas as an oblation. In this story, there was no mediation between God and man – Jesus alone was the receiver of His crew’s fear and praise. All of the chaos and comic absurdity of the Jonah story is displaced by the authoritative voice of God through Christ, which alone was enough to calm the storm. Just like the beginning of Creation in Genesis 1, we witness through Christ how the voice of God overcomes the turbulent storms of life and sets chaos to order.
This story is certainly a declaration of Jesus’ Godship and His sharing in the authority of the Father but in another way, it also serves as a pastoral message to us for how God’s voice can calm the storms of life and bring us to peace. Though Jesus was found asleep in the boat during the disciples’ time of trouble, we must remember that this is more symbolic than theological. If this gospel story’s insinuation of Godship is correct, then this is indeed the same God whom the Psalmist declares: “Behold, he who keeps watch over Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4). God is watchful indeed, even when we imagine Him to be unobservant. We must always be prepared to listen when He calls to us because His is the voice which speaks life into being from nothingness and which sets us at peace and wholeness. When God speaks – in whatever manner He so chooses to be mediated to us – the startling nature of His first Word to us will always be the same as it was to that great storm: “Peace! Be still!”
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
Closing Prayer
O God, it is your will to hold both heaven and earth in a single peace. Let the design of your great love shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows, and give peace to your Church, peace among nations, peace in our homes, and peace in our hearts; through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
