Jesus (32 page)

Alone on the shaded porch, I had a commanding view of Jesus's life in Galilee. To my left I could easily see the ruins of Capernaum, just a mile or so from where I stood. Past that was Bethsaida, where Peter and Andrew lived. In front of me, across the sea, were the pinkish-gray hills of the land of the Gerasenes, where Jesus healed a demoniac. On the road beneath me was the traditional site where Jesus healed the woman with the hemorrhage. To my right were the traditional venues for the Call of the First Disciples, the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and the Breakfast by the Sea. And I was standing on (or near) the spot where Jesus had preached the Sermon on the Mount. I felt drunk with the spiritual history of the place.

I sat down, my back against the cold stone wall. The cloudless sky ranged from a bright blue overhead to the palest lavender at the horizon. A light breeze came up. For the first time in my life I was able to pray with my eyes open. In classic Ignatian contemplation you imagine yourself in various Scripture passages, trying your best to see the place in the mind's eye. But this time I had to do no imagining at all. Here it was, laid out before me. On Barluzzi's portico I could easily imagine the first-century fishermen plying their trade on the sea—because I could see beneath me, on the shoreline, fishermen casting their nets.

Suddenly a terrific wind arose, sweeping all the dry palm leaves off the portico. I laughed, because I
really
wanted a storm to blow up. Let me tell you why.

I'
VE BEEN A SPIRITUAL
director for more than twenty years. It is one of my greatest joys.

Spiritual direction helps people notice where God is active in their prayer and in their daily lives. While it may overlap with a number of other practices, spiritual direction is neither psychotherapy (which focuses mainly on the psychological underpinnings of a person's problems), nor pastoral counseling (which focuses mostly on problem-solving in a spiritual setting), nor confession (which focuses on sin and forgiveness). Spiritual directors are trained specifically to enable a person to recognize God's activity; this means helping that person with prayer.

What topics come up in spiritual direction? Anything significant that arises in prayer, moments in your daily life when God felt close, and frustrations over how God might seem absent. Being a good spiritual director requires formal training, which includes learning how to listen well and notice where a person might be overlooking God's activity. It's not enough simply to be prayerful. St. Teresa of Ávila, the sixteenth-century Carmelite nun, famously said that if she had to choose for a spiritual director between someone who was wise and someone who was holy, she would choose the wise person. Optimally, you would like both!

My first spiritual “directee,” as they're called in the trade, approached me when I had been a Jesuit for only two years. Following my novitiate, I studied philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. An undergraduate in my Introduction to Philosophy course asked if he could see me for spiritual direction. I asked my own spiritual director if I was ready. “You're ready to be a director when people start asking you,” he said. It was a moving experience to hear, and see, how God was at work in this young man's life. Directing him also introduced me to a common experience:
my
faith grew, the more I saw how God was at work in someone else. It's a spiritual boost to see God's activity in others, particularly during times when you, yourself, feel dry. It's like doubting the wind and then seeing it sweep across a field of tall grass. You say to yourself,
Ah, there it is!

The next summer I spent two weeks in a spiritual directors' training program at a Jesuit retreat house outside of Toronto, Canada. Years later, after my ordination I spent an entire summer at a Jesuit retreat house near Cincinnati, Ohio, learning about spiritual direction techniques, most of which hinge on being a good listener. “Slow, silent, and stupid,” goes one mantra. Don't rush; don't be afraid of silence; and don't assume that you know what the other person means—ask.

Since then I've served as a spiritual director for dozens of people, both on a regular monthly basis and during retreats—weekends and eight-day and thirty-day retreats. It is rarely dull. In Ohio one of our instructors told us, “If you're bored in spiritual direction, it probably means that the other person is not talking about God. They might be talking about problems at work, difficulties at home, or health issues, but they're not yet talking about God. Because the Holy Spirit is never boring!”

In my experience as a spiritual director, I've noticed that a handful of Bible passages seem to help almost everyone. I've already mentioned Jeremiah 29:11, which begins, “For surely I know the plans I have for you,” and invites the reader to meditate on God's provident care. But the passage that is by far the most helpful for people going through difficult times is the Stilling of the Storm. I know of no other passage that is as helpful to Christians. It has been helpful to me too.

T
HE STORY IS ESSENTIALLY
the same in the three Synoptic Gospels, though the song begins on slightly different notes. “One day . . .” (Luke). “Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him . . .” (Matthew). “On that day, when evening had come . . .” (Mark). For purposes of clarity I'll focus on Mark's account.

Jesus asks his disciples to cross in the boat to the “other side” of the Sea of Galilee. Mark's audience will notice two things. First, Jesus's request comes at the close of a long day of preaching, from a fishing boat offshore. The crowds have just heard several parables, the last being the Parable of the Sower. Jesus will now leave them behind to sail with the disciples. Mark tells us that other boats accompany them; these may have carried the larger group of followers. (Remember that there were increasingly larger concentric circles of apostles, disciples, and followers.
³
) Perhaps Jesus will reveal something special to the smaller group. So readers may think it's a hopeful time.

Mark's audience will notice something else: it is evening. On the sea this can be a time not of anticipation, but fear.

Before the story begins in earnest, the English translation includes a charming phrase. “And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.” For many years I wondered about those words. What did it mean—“just as he was”? The English might be vague, but the Greek is clearer
: paralambanousin auton hōs ēn en tō ploiō
. A literal translation would be: “They took him as he was in the ship.” That is, Jesus was already in the boat, so the disciples just piled in, and together they set off for the other side. But the opaque English translation unintentionally reminds us that we need to take Jesus “as he is” rather than trying to make him as we would wish him to be. The disciples often had a hard time dealing with Jesus as he was, just as we do.

Suddenly a great (
megalē
) windstorm arises on the sea, and the waves begin to swamp the boat. The Greek suggests a kind of tornado. Even today storms suddenly stir up the Sea of Galilee, the result of dramatic differences in temperatures between the shoreline (680 feet below sea level) and the surrounding hills (which can reach 2,000 feet). The strong winds that funnel through the hills easily whip up waves in the relatively shallow waters (only two hundred feet deep). Today a boating industry for pilgrims thrives on the Sea of Galilee; often boat owners will take pilgrims on a tour and even include a Mass aboard the vessels. A few former pilgrims told me that while they were aboard those tourist boats, a storm arrived without warning. Their surprise was exceeded only by the sheer pleasure of witnessing a biblical “storm at sea.”

But the disciples would not have felt any pleasure. It's important to remember the terror that storms held for those in Jesus's day as well as the rich religious symbolism of water. In ancient times water was a symbol for life and a means of purification, but it also held out the potential for death and was an occasion of danger, as in the story of the Flood or the story of Jonah. The Psalms speak of God's power over the seas and also use water as a symbol of peril: “Save me, O God,” says the psalmist, “for the waters have come up to my neck.”
⁴
Raging seas and howling storms would have represented to Jesus's contemporaries chaos and danger. Jewish belief was that the sea could also be the abode of demonic forces.

On a less theological level, sea voyages were simply dangerous, as St. Paul would attest.
⁵
A storm at sea could be frightening even for experienced fishermen. Far worse is the storm at sea at night.

Not long after a terrible hurricane hit the East Coast of the United States and caused widespread destruction, I saw footage of a woman describing the panic she felt as the “storm surge” hit. She described the waves barreling up her street, bursting in the door of her house, and rising up to her neck; she could barely get the words out—the fear in her voice was still palpable. A cubic meter of water weighs over two thousand pounds, which explains the destruction it can cause during a hurricane or flood, crushing everything in its path. This is a window into the kind of terror that the water would have held in Jesus's day.

But in the face of the chaotic storm Jesus is calm. Beyond calm. “He was in the stern, asleep on the cushion,” says Mark. What Donahue and Harrington call “untroubled sleep” signals trust in God's protection even in the direst circumstances.
⁶

A word about that boat. Before I left for Israel a Jesuit friend said that the most moving part of his entire Holy Land pilgrimage was the Jesus Boat Museum. That a museum, and not a church, won that accolade recommended a visit. So one day I dragged George to the ultramodern Yigal Allon Museum, located on a
kibbutz
by the shoreline.
⁷

Inside was the Ancient Galilee Boat, the remarkably well-preserved remains of a first-century fishing craft discovered in 1986, when a drought lowered the level of the lake. The artifact from the time of Jesus sits in a pristine room, gently supported by cushioned metal struts. The dark, wooden vessel, which would have included a mast, is large—almost 27 feet long by 7½ feet wide. For me the most touching feature was evidence of numerous repairs, the reuse of timbers, and a multiplicity of wood types (twelve in all), some salvaged from other boats. It suggested, as the brochure said, “a long work life and an owner of meager means.” What's more: “An analysis of crew size suggests that this is the type of boat referred to in the Gospels in use among Jesus's disciples.”
⁸

A smaller, modern-day reconstruction of the boat in another room included a raised wooden ledge on which several people could sit. So it would have been easy for Jesus to find a place to sleep, perhaps on a cushion or a bag of sand used for ballast or comfort.
⁹

But it wasn't easy for his friends to understand
how
he could sleep in the violent gale. “They woke him up,” said Mark, “and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?'” Among his disciples were four fishermen, one of whom was likely the owner of the boat, and even
they
were afraid of dying. It must have been a hellacious storm.

Jesus rises up. Matthew uses
egertheis
, which conveys not simply standing, but rising to his full height to confront the storm. He “rebukes” the wind and says to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” The word Mark uses for Jesus's rebuke (
epetimēsen
) is the same used for his commands to evil spirits, and Jesus's phrasing is similar to the way he rebuked the demon in the synagogue at Capernaum: “Be silent, and come out of him!”

At once there is a “great” calm. The Greek
megalē
is the same word used for the “great” wind, highlighting both natural danger and Jesus's power over it. We can tell that the disciples are terrified, because Jesus says to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” A more literal translation of Mark's Greek—
pōs ouk echete pistin
—may better convey Jesus's amazement at the disciples' reaction: “How is it that you still have no faith?”

Their terror is not surprising. We're so used to some Gospel stories that they can seem predictable. But sit on the narrow wooden seats next to the disciples, and Jesus's power will render you speechless. And the disciples are frightened by not simply the miraculous—or what might seem magical—power, but what it
meant.
Controlling nature was the prerogative of God alone. The creation story in Genesis recounts God's dividing of the waters, separating the rains above and the seas below, and also exerting power over chaotic nature.
¹⁰
Jews aboard might have remembered one of many psalms on that same theme: “You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.”
¹¹

The next line is stunning:
ephobēthēsan phobon megan.
They feared a great fear.

Fear of the storm has morphed into fear of God, the awe accompanying a display of divine power, a theophany. When they next open their mouths, I imagine them having a hard time getting the words out: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

The carpenter who just offered homey parables on the shoreline reveals a supernatural command over the waters. Jesus is mighty in word and in deed. I can only imagine the disciples sitting in stupefied silence as the voyage continued, now over calm waters.

B
ACK TO SPIRITUAL DIRECTION
. Why has this story proved so helpful to so many people I've seen through the years?

Out of all my directees only one was a fisherman! But everyone faces stormy times, when God's presence is hard to perceive. One of the most common struggles in the spiritual life is a feeling of God's absence during painful times. Even some of the saints report this. Why is this so common? Perhaps because when we are struggling, we tend to focus on the area of pain. It's natural, but it makes it more difficult to see where God might be at work in other places, where God is not asleep.