Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction

After the par­ables of the king­dom expressed with the seed that grows auto­mat­ic­ally (without human effort) and the mus­tard seed, Mark con­cludes this sec­tion thus “with many such par­ables he spoke the word to the crowd, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in par­ables, but he explained everything in private to his dis­ciples” (Mark 4:33–34). Hav­ing thought the people with vari­ous par­ables, Jesus decided to con­tin­ue his mis­sion of teach­ing and enlight­en­ing the people in anoth­er area. Hence, he com­manded his dis­ciples to get the boat ready. Jesus leaves a pre­dom­in­antly Jew­ish region to a pre­dom­in­antly Gen­tile (Pagan) region, sign of the uni­ver­sal­ity of his salvif­ic mis­sion, and the sav­ing plan of God. This also is in ful­fil­ment of what he said in Mark 1:38–39, that his mis­sion con­sists in teach­ing. Hav­ing evan­gel­ized the Jew­ish ter­rit­ory, he now extends his evan­gel­iz­a­tion to the non-Jew­ish ter­rit­ory. His mis­sion in fact, con­sists in pro­claim­ing and spread­ing of the Gos­pel mes­sage to all (cf. Mark 1:37).

Stilling the storm

At the com­mand of Jesus for the sea to be still, Mark says the wind ceased and there was a great calm. Jesus quieted the sea waves and it became calm. The waves ceas­ing and the sea becom­ing calm means the dis­ciples became relaxed without worry and fear of drown­ing. After rebuk­ing the wind, Jesus also rebuked the dis­ciples. Hav­ing quieted the storm, he said to them “why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40). The dis­ciples have shown lack of faith in oth­er cir­cum­stances, which led to Jesus rebuk­ing them (cf. Mark 7:18; 8:17–18.21). In advising the dis­ciples on the need to keep away from fear and worry con­cern­ing their mater­i­al well-being, Jesus described them as people of little faith (cf. Matt 6:25–34). Because they have little faith, they worry about what to eat and what to wear. In this instance, they had little faith. But in the case.….

Conclusion

Mark 4:35–41 is a food for thought. How many storms are there in our world? What about our per­son­al storms? How do we go about them? How do we calm them? How do we silence the storm­ing sea of our soci­ety, of our fam­il­ies and of our life? Des­pite the grav­ity of the storm, we should always remem­ber that our life and our time are in God’s hands (cf. Ps 31:15). There­fore, be strong! Let your heart take cour­age, you that hope in God (cf. Ps 31:24). In see­ing what Jesus did, the dis­ciples asked “who then is this?” Hav­ing restored calm to the sea, the dis­ciples inter­rog­ated them­selves on the per­son­al­ity of Jesus. Cer­tainly, they asked the right ques­tion because the calm­ing of the storm gives evid­ence that Jesus is truly son of God. Observe the things hap­pen­ing around you and in your life. Do they arouse the same ques­tion? Do they teach you any­thing about the pres­ence of God.…..

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I and II)!! The reflec­tion for the 12^th Sunday of the year (B) is found in vol. II pages 266–275. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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