Father Dom's Homs: Finding Faith in the Midst of the Storm

James Caldwell: This is The Manly Catholic, the podcast that calls you out of the shadows and into the fight. Here we forge men into warriors for Christ, husbands, fathers, and leaders who refuse to kneel to the modern world's lies. No more passivity, no more excuses, no more lukewarm faith. This is your battle cry, your call to arms. The time for weakness is over. It's time to fight. Welcome to the Manly Catholic. Let's get to work. Name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit. Well, all of our readings today. Allow us the opportunity to focus on a very important gift that God has given us, and it is faith. It is faith. Every single one of our readings, unpack that. But before we dive into faith, in all of our readings, it's preceded by a storm. In our first reading, there's a storm. In our second reading, Saint Paul writes from the experience of him traveling through a storm that gives us gives him the strength and the faith to write as he does. And in our gospel today, we know this story very well. There definitely is a storm. And so we're reminded of faith, which is a great gift we get at baptism. It's instilled in us, it's grafted to us, it's a gift given to us, one that is not earned. And that baptism we receive that onto our soul. The church says that it is infused into your soul. That means it can never be removed. Can never be removed. And throughout our lives as Catholics, as we live this life, which is a storm in itself, strengthened by the graces of the sacraments, we can increase our faith as we mature. We call that wisdom. And then along the way, we can show other people the faith that Jesus Christ has given you, and you can become, as Saint Paul says in our first or second reading today, a witness. A witness so that you can walk with other people with love. Walk with other people in compassion. Meet people where they're at in their pain and suffering, like Jesus does, and be a witness to them so that you can increase their faith and they too can know God, love God, and and serve God and have faith that frees them to follow Jesus Christ. ⁓ what great joy we have today. But most of us in our Catholic tradition leave this great potential of theological virtue of faith left untapped. Untapped. And I see faith here at OLC all the time. And I'm so proud of so many of you who have been witness to this faith. All of you, witness to this faith. Even just being here at Mass. There's faith there. Whether you want to be here or not, there's graces that abound. And then guess what? We get to take that to the world. And we become soldiers for Christ. And that gives us the meaning of life, doesn't it? And so we look at faith. So important is faith that in the great letter to the Hebrews, I think it's Chapter 9 or or chapter 10, the writer says that without faith, it is impossible to please God. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. But in your baptism, you have it. Okay, there's hope. But why would the writer say that? It is impossible to please God without faith. Because in faith, it's more than a feeling. In faith, there's an intellectual ascent, there's an ascent of the heart. In faith, there is submission. Everything that God has revealed to us, the covenants and the laws, the statutes, the decrees, Jesus in the flesh, who is God, all the mysteries of the faith, the creed, the glory of the Our Father, the Saints, all the doctrines and teachings of the church. In faith we submit to that as an intellectual ascent because it sets us free. But sometimes submission is hard. We need faith, and in turn it increases our faith so that we can do that. And when we do submit to everything that God has revealed to us, there's great freedom. But sometimes it's hard to do that. Storms in our lives can unlock that. And we'll get to that in just a second. Faith is so important that if you look at the healing and miracle stories of Jesus throughout the great gospels, you will see that Jesus will say this after they've been healed. Go in peace. Your faith has saved you. Your faith has saved you. So let's walk through our readings once again, looking at our first reading that unpacks the power of faith that Elijah had. Elijah's one of my favorite prophets. And so we find Elijah in this great storm at Mount Orab. What is he doing there? Well, let's backtrack a little bit to get the whole context of this. Picture and how Elijah has been strengthened in faith by the power of God and through a storm. Elijah knows storms very well. Elijah was a prophet called by God, ordained by God, to be a mouthpiece of God to go to northern Israel, who have fallen out of the great law, covenants, and commandments of our Heavenly Father, and have fell victim, almost the entire kingdom, to the worship of the demonic God Baal. King Ahab married Elijah. A woman, a pagan woman from a different country. Her name was Jezebel. Jezebel was a priestess of this demonic god Baal. And the whole kingdom fell prey to her and her desire to replace the worship of God, the one true God, with Baal. And the kingdom was absolutely falling apart and in ruin with morals. For to appease this false god of Baal required human sacrifice. Most especially infants. And so Elijah is completely upset. Many times he says, I am on fire for the zeal of God. Ahab and Jezebel, you have slain God's prophets, all of them. I'm the only one left. Come and get me. Such strength and courage he had. Well, he might have bitten off more than he can chew because that's exactly what Ahab and Jezebel do. They call him to Mount Carmel. We all know this story as well, too. With all 450 prophets of Baal. They kind of have a throwdown. All right, all you prophets of Baal, you do your false worship and see if your God comes down and answers your prayers. And for hours and hours and hours almost all day, all the prophets of Baal dance around and do all kinds of crazy things. And there's nothing because their God is false. Then Elijah builds an altar with a proper sacrifice, calls upon God, he comes down in an instant, consumes the sacrifice in great favor of Elijah. Most everyone there converts to God. They say, ⁓ your God is the true God, except all 450 prophets of Baal. They do not bow to God. So dangerous are the prophets of Baal that Elijah does something that gets him in a lot of trouble. He eliminates all 450 prophets of Baal. So dangerous were they in his mind to stay alive. Well, Jezebel doesn't like this very much. And so she sends the whole court and military after Elijah. Now he's on the run. And he has no shelter, he has no food, he has no friends, he's completely alone. And so he finds a tree in the desert and he lays underneath it and he prays to God. He says, ⁓ God, take my soul, just let me die. There's no more hope. He falls asleep. That angel wakes him up, and before him is a hearth cake and a jug of water. And the angel says, Eat. So Elijah eats. And then he falls asleep. And the angel wakes him up again and again. There's another hearth cake and a jug of water. And the angel says, You must eat. You need the strength for your journey is long. Well, that's like us, our journey from this world to heaven, our pilgrim journey with all the storms. We need sustenance, the bread of angels, the Eucharist. There's a symbolic representation there. So Elijah is filled with the bread of angels and he's ready. God calls him. But first, God calls him to Mount Horeb. Mount Horeb has spiritual and historical religious significance. That's where Moses sees God in the burning bush. That's where Moses receives the Ten Commandments. It's also where Moses came down the mountain and found the people worshiping an idol, a golden calf, falling into idol worship. So there's great significance here. So God called Elijah to a cave, and in the cave, God says, I'm going to speak to you. Come to the entrance, and he does. And there's there's wind that crushes rocks, and there's earthquakes that destroy everything, and there's all consuming fire that you can't stop. And one would think look at this power. God must be in these things. I want this power. I want this control. And God says, I'm not in any of these things. And then Elijah comes to realise that God is in a small whispering voice. He covers his face with the mantle and he goes into the cave to pray to our Heavenly Father like we can in our adoration chapel here, a perpetual adoration chapel. It's a small whispering sound, which is interesting. If you look at this in the Greek, it doesn't say small whispering sound, it says gentle breeze. Which should take you back to Genesis before the fall, before disorder, before chaos, where Adam and Eve would walk in the lazy time of the day with the Lord. Walk in the breezy time of the day. Huh? Breeze, wind, breath. Sounds like the Holy Spirit. In the Latin translation, it's a little air. Again. Air, the breath of God, walk in Hebrew, it's all creative. When God speaks, things happen. So Elijah is encompassed with what? The power of the Holy Spirit. Because of that, he's given great confidence, and he goes to the northern kingdom and he proclaims boldly once again, with no fear, but with complete courage, because he has what? Faith. And it took a storm for him to unpack the faith that is in him with God. Because we can't do it ourselves. In the year 850 BC, God takes Elijah up to the heavens in a whirling, whirling wind and a fiery chariot. Huh? Whirling wind, Holy Spirit, fiery chariot, Holy Spirit. There's a connection here. We need the graces of the Holy Spirit and the sacraments to unpack our faith, to be like Elijah and bring light to the darkness of this world. So we look to our second reading as well, too. St. Paul, like Elijah, he's someone who's been through a lot of storms. And he's writing in a very convincing way. He says, Brothers and sisters, I speak the truth in Christ. I do not lie. My conscience joins with the Holy Spirit and bearing witness of Christ. Just like Elijah, confidence. Paul's been through many storms. The most pivotal was on his way to Damascus. The risen Lord encounters him and says, Paul, Saul, Saul, before Paul, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Well, Saul was persecuting the church and the Christians. But Jesus says, You're persecuting me, therefore, Jesus is the church. Jesus is the body of Christ. Us. So convinced was St. Paul in the midst of this storm that he converted to Christianity. And practically all of the New Testament is written by him. When we give our lives to God in faith, we can move mountains and do glorious things. Well, as we look at our gospel, we know this one very well. And there's a great storm, there's no doubt about this. They're on the sea. They're in a boat. And they're stuck. They're afraid. They're being destroyed by the winds, the sea, the waves. They see Jesus in a supernatural way that terrifies them. But Peter, with his faith, knows it's the Lord and he says, Lord, I want to walk on the water. Who says that? You would think that, well, if I were in the boat and I saw Jesus, I would say, Jesus, I want you to do these things for me. So I can be comfortable. Calm the storm. And the waves and the wind and get in my boat. I want to sit here. You can do everything for me. If that were the case, God would never unlock the potential of faith that is in me. But he asks Peter, yes, come out onto the water. Peter does something that's inside him that he never thought possible. In the midst of the storm, he needed the storm to unlock the faith that's in him. And Jesus knew that. Peter, when you do this, I'm going to get you ready for something extraordinary. But here's the potential that's in you. And I will unlock it in this storm. Kinda like we need storms in our lives sometimes. I know we don't want them. Sometimes there's storms in the world that we can't control. That's inevitable. The world itself is a storm as we travel from this life to the next. Sometimes there's storms in our family and our friends. We can walk with them. Storms in our marriage or or or with our children. Storms that are raging in our hearts and our minds and our souls. And we have an opportunity to unite our suffering with Christ on the cross and his passion that can redeem the world. That increases our faith. So Jesus says, Take courage, do not be afraid. Even when Peter sees the raging of the storm, he begins to lose faith like we do sometimes. He begins to sink, sink into the world and adopt idols once again. But Jesus is always there. When we cry out to Jesus, he'll help us. In the storm and in our suffering, Jesus is so close to us because we're participating in his passion and his suffering. He's very close to us. So we cry out to the Lord and He saves us. He says, Do not be, do ⁓ do not be afraid, take courage. I am with you always, do not be afraid. So as we enter into this mass and receive the great Eucharist, God's body, blood, soul, and divinity, we know that we can increase our faith with such things and these gifts. For it is your faith that can bring life to the world and others to Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Brothers, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If the show has added value to your life, I'm going to ask you to do three things. Share with the brother who needs it, leave us a review. Finally support the show so we can keep fighting. Links are in the show notes. We'll see you next week.