St. Volodymyr's Parish

Sunday Gospel Matthew 14, 22-34

to listen sermon please click play

Jesus came to them, walking on the sea. In that manner the evangelist Matthew described how Christ came to help His disciples.

We see, when Christ multiplied five loaves of bread and two fish for 5000 men, He sent His disciples to the other side of lake, and went to pray. When the disciples were in the boat on the lake, a storm started.  Some of the apostles were fishermen and knew what to do in a situation like that, but the waves and wind were so strong that they couldn’t do anything and the boat was beaten by the waves in the middle of the lake.  Then Jesus came, walking on the sea… He came, but His disciples could not recognise Him and said that it was a ghost. Peter did a strange gesture saying: if it is You then bid me walk to You on the water. And Jesus said: "Come”. Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water. But when he was walking he looked to the sides and saw waves and wind, and became afraid and began to sink. And again Jesus came to help him, He took his hand and saved Peter, pulled him from the water, saying: "O man of little faith, why did you doubt?” and when they came into the boat the storm ceased.

When we look onto our life, we can see some parallels with today’s Gospel. Very often our life is like a rapid sea. These waves and winds are our difficulties, problems, and troubles that occur in our lives and we cannot do anything with them. Unfortunately, every one of us has these waves in our lives.  It is important to see and understand that our Lord always comes to us to save us. Christ sent His disciples and went to pray alone, but when He saw the apostles in the boat during the storm He came to help them. So in our lives… when God sees us in danger or in difficulty He always comes to us. He comes to help… As He came into the boat and the storm ceased, Jesus comes into our hearts to bring His peace and tranquility, to bring His joy and love, to cease all our troubles. And what do we do? Do we see Christ who is coming to help us or do we see a ghost, start being afraid and run away, or do we convince ourselves that it is not God comes to our aid? What do we do?... I think that every of us can give an answer to ourselves.

Peter got out from a boat to Jesus. Do we come to meet Christ who is coming to save us? When we have troubles, do we seek a meeting with God in a prayer, in the Holy Mysteries, in a church… or are we looking for some solution in a completely different things?

We saw that Peter was walking on the sea, but at the moment he saw wind and waves he began to sink. So in our lives... When we have some troubles we go to a church to pray. We prayed once, twice and nothing happened and we went back to our troubles. But when Peter began to sink he cried out: "Lord, save me”. Can we do the same? Do we know how to be with God to the end and see Him as the only saviour? Peter started to sink because he had looked aside and he lost Jesus as a goal of where to go. The same thing happens in our lives. When we see the goal of our life, which is life with God (I think so) we go to this goal and God helps us along the way. And despite all the storms that occur in our lives we will go firmly and confidently, because we know where we are going. But when we start to look aside, to be afraid of what is going around us, to turn away our view from Christ, we begin to sink in these difficulties, problems, troubles, etc.

God who created us and loves us; He comes to us to give us help and salvation. But it depends on us whether we stretch out our hand to take it; to take His hand and firmly hold it and allow Him to lead us through the stormy sea of our lives. Only on us does it depend whether we let Christ into our hearts and bring His peace and tranquillity, joy and love. And then all these hazards and troubles, this storm that rages around us will blow over. And in our hearts will be the peace of God, which we will be able to share with other people and to testify to them the living Christ, who helped us.

So, I wish that every one of us, by reflecting on today’s Gospel we could reopen for ourselves and see God who comes to us; who comes through our troubles and difficulties, to give us a helping hand. I wish to see this hand and firmly seize it and never let it go. But walk with Him every day of our lives here on Earth and also forever in the Heavenly Kingdom. Amen.