Rest a while

This is not the first time in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus is acknowledged as the “Son of God”. Earlier, after Jesus rescued Peter from the waters, quieted the sea, and the wind had ceased at his command, those on board the boat recognized who Jesus really is.

However, in today’s passage there is a pivotal dramatic moment in the relationship between Jesus and his closest friends.

Jesus first asks: ‘Who do people say that I am?’ Those around Jesus reach back into the history of the Jewish people and respond: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, and other prophets.

Jesus then asks those whom he has lovingly invited into his community, patiently taught – those on whom the future of the mission depend: ‘Who do you say that I am?’

It is at this critical moment, in between the question and the answer that Jesus must wonder if all that he has shared with them has taken root.

The question Jesus puts to these first disciples, at some time in our own growing into spiritual maturity, he puts to each of us, “Who do you say I am?”

Do I, like those early disciples, reach back into my history and offer the answer provided by my parents, or caregivers; by my teachers; by a religious leader?

Or do I dare provide an answer from the depth of my own inner self.

This answer may well differ from those who first nurtured me into faith.

However, the answer will be mine, and my relationship with Jesus will be founded on my response.

To provide the answer, may I suggest we need to be still and silent, first to hear the question, and second, before responding, to hear the reply from that quiet voice, which resides deep within me!

A line from this Sunday’s First Reading, reads

“for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples”. (Isaiah 56:7)

A recent Saturday evening Mass at Sagrada Familia parish in Barcelona had all the hallmarks of a neighbourhood worship service, from prayers for ill and deceased members to name-day wishes for two congregants in the pews.

But it also featured security checks to get in and curious tourists peering down to take photos of the worshippers from above.

The regular Mass is held in the crypt of modernist architect Antoni Gaudí’s masterpiece church, The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, one of Europe’s most visited monuments.

With the pandemic stringent rules now relaxed, iconic sacred sites are struggling to accommodate the faithful who come to pray and the millions of visitors who often pay to view the art and architecture.

An increasingly popular strategy is to have visitors and the faithful go separate ways – with services held in discrete places, visits barred at worship times, or altogether different entry queues.

This spring, the Vatican opened a separate “pathway” starting outside St. Peter’s Basilica for those who want to enter to pray or attend Mass, so they wouldn’t be discouraged by sometimes hours-long lines for the average of 55,000 daily visitors.

But the challenge remains: how to balance the churches’ competing roles amid the tourism surge without sacrificing their spiritual purpose.

With an estimated 330 million people visiting religious sites yearly around the world, it’s one of the tourism market’s largest segments.

Filled with masterpieces from Romanesque sculpture to lavish Baroque decorations, Santiago’s cathedral of Santiago de Compostela attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists and pilgrims who since the Middle Ages have travelled along the Camino routes to venerate St. James’s tomb.

As people, we need the transcendent.

Leisure and rest, and time with God, are not incompatible,

Co-existence between worshippers and tourists has been controversial at Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia. Built as a landmark cathedral in the Byzantine era, turned into a mosque by the conquering Ottoman empire in the 1400s, and opened as a museum for the last century, it was converted back into a functioning mosque in 2020 by Turkey’s Islamic-oriented government.

Now visitors can tour the structure for free outside of prayer hours. In Hagia Sophia’s main section where prayers are held, the vast mosaics depicting Christian figures are hidden behind drapes and most of the marble floor is covered with carpeting.

With some 2.5 million annual visitors, Barcelona Cathedral was also close to a breaking point. The cathedral instituted caps on visitor numbers, required tour groups to use wireless audio guides to reduce noise, and added staffers to explain the new policies to visitors and those coming for daily Mass or confession, held in a side chapel with crystal doors to preserve silence.

Many of these iconic buildings are still active places of worship.

In a statement it reminds persons visiting that “this cathedral has been and is a space dedicated to prayer” before describing its stunning Catalan Gothic architecture.

3.7 million tourists explored the Sagrada Familia’s arresting architecture and mesmerizing stained glass windows last year. Each begins their visit as a tourist, they may well leave to continue their journey as a pilgrim.

“for my house shall be called
a house of prayer for all peoples”. (Isaiah 56:7)

The illustration is of The Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia, also known as Barcelona Cathedral, Spain.

[It is worth knowing that the building known as the Barcelona Cathedral and the La Sagrada Familia Basilica are separate buildings.]

This Sunday’s Gospel ( Mt. 14: 22 – 33) recounts for us the story of Jesus walking on the water toward the disciples in the boat, Peter’s movement toward Jesus, Peter sinking, and Jesus stretching out and taking hold of him.
Did Jesus actually walk on the water? I have no idea!

Were there perhaps stones he used? I have no idea, although my mind casts back to the image of The Giants Causeway, an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic fissure eruption.

It is located in County Antrim on the north coast of Northern Ireland.

Rather than concern myself with the historical truth of this narrative, I am going to use the story as a metaphor and invite you to journey with me!
The Jewish people of Jesus’ time, although some were fisherman, had a strong dislike of the sea. This dislike verged on fear.

The reason was that the sea was the home of Leviathan, the sea monster.

The Psalmist sings of God defeating Leviathan and other sea monsters (Psalm 74). Yahweh did not just make the world, he fought with the sea to make it. And having over-mastered the waters, to make the world, when he wanted to annihilate the world he regretted making, it was the waters he used to destroy it.

Deep in the folk lore and psyche of the Jewish people these stories are recalled around the campfire!

A storm at sea would stir the memories with immediacy, “battered by the waves, far from land, and the wind was against them” (v.24) [Leviathan has stirred!]

Right from within this place appears Jesus. Jesus is present in the home of the monster, and calls Peter to come to him through that sea.

Jesus is present in our stormy place, the place we dislike most, our place of fear.

And the way to Jesus is through it. There is no walking around the edges. Jesus is in the place of dislike, the place of fear. In fact, St. Peter calls to Jesus to come to him at that very place, “Lord, if it is you come to me on the water.”( v. 28)

The illustration shows Peter reaching out from the water (that place of dislike, of fear) and Jesus is there with him, in that same place.

The Scripture commentator, N.T. (Tom) Wright comments, “Curiously enough, only one great picture of this scene has ever been painted (by Conrad Witz in 1444. You might have thought it would have made an ideal subject: Jesus as a shimmering figure on the water, frightened disciples huddling in the boat, and Peter, caught between glory and terror, walking on the water towards Jesus and then…starting to sink. Perhaps devout artists avoided it because it seemed to show up the great apostle in a bad light” – N. T. Wright