Tuesday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

“Even the Wind and the Seas Obey Him!”
 
Today’s gospel from Matthew (8:23-27) has Jesus asleep in a boat with his apostles crossing the Sea of Galilee when a violent storm suddenly arises. As we all know well, they awake Jesus in a panic. He immediately calms the storm and rebukes His disciples for their lack of faith in Him.
 
Given the fact that Matthew was writing for a number of small Christian communities in the early Church who were being “buffeted” by surrounding hostile forces, it seems reasonable to read today’s passage from more than a literal perspective.
 
And there seems little question in my mind that we, too, are living in especially “turbulent” times and are being “buffeted” by many conflicting ‘forces’.
 
That being the case, I have found it remarkable that during these times of division, I have heard virtually nothing regarding the body of Christian faith that supposedly unites so many of us. Am I reading and listening to all the wrong sources?
 
We profess that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Yet what is true and what is not eludes us and is an occasion of bitter (and violent?) dispute.
 
We are told that the Law and the Prophets are summed up in the Two Great Commandments: Love God and Love Your Neighbor. Yet we are so sharply divided at seemingly every turn.
 
Is Christianity, at the end of the day, only a ‘fair weather’ religion?
 
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
 
Does it fall to us to prove Chesterton wrong?
 
“Something”  tells me it does.