An Immersion Experience in the Language of Faith

Dear Friend,

In the readings this week Elijah detects the presence of God in a whispering sound. Paul, meanwhile, is in anguish over what seems to be happening right before his eyes: Gentiles are accepting Christ as the Messiah before those of his own deeply held tradition. He himself has had to start over, squaring his experience of the Risen Christ with the tradition that’s shaped his mind and heart for decades. In the Gospel, Jesus enters the wind and waves and the anguish of his own disciples. Call it an immersion experience in the language of faith, a lesson in how to enter their own lives and the turbulence that awaits them as disciples.   

Over the past few years at the parish, I’ve witnessed sisters and brothers in Christ navigating churning and overpowering waters in various kinds of windstorms, including those hit with the sudden death of a loved one and others accompanying spouses and parents who slowly lose memory. Crippling diseases sap the mobility of people who have been physically fit their whole lives. The fire storms and debris flow of 2018 and last year’s Pacific Palisades fire were horrific in their impact – with lives lost, and thousands homeless and at sea. 

When the Father Virgil Cordano Center was getting started Sister Maria sketched the image of a boat to represent how the Center could be a place of shared faith, hope, and love. She imagined community as a vessel for the presence of God, like the loaves and fishes last week. These are sacraments of beginning again in a new and brutal moment of history. Like the first disciples, we’re being asked to learn how to be fed and how to feed each other and how to take first steps, even across water.

Gratefully,

Father Dan ofm

Pastor