"Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith?"

† In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

My dear faithful. Today is the fourth Sunday after Epiphany. The feast of Epiphany Our Lord showed Himself to the world. Today is the fourth Sunday after Our Lord has manifested Himself to the world. Throughout these Sundays after Epiphany the Church shows us Our Lord. We see thus in the Gospels of these Sundays Our Lord's divine power, Our Lord's divine power over nature.

In the Second Sunday after Epiphany, we saw Our Lord's power to change nature. He changed water into wine. He showed His mastery over the material world. The entire universe was created by Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. He proved His divine power over nature by changing one thing into another instantaneously. A power truly divine. He shows to us that He has the power to change us, as it were ordinary water, into sons of God, by giving us grace. This was the first miracle that He performed, and His disciples believed in Him.

Last Sunday we saw Our Lord's power to heal nature. Not only does our Lord have the power to change creation according to His will, but He can restore it to the order willed by Him. He heals the leper. He is asked 'Lord, if you wish, You can make me pure'. And Our Lord responds 'I will, be thou pure'. By a simple act of His will, by a simple word, He cleanses the leper. And immediately He commands the leper not to tell anyone, but to go to the priests, to give testimony of the power of Our Lord to forgive sin to the priests. By a simple act of His will, He gives to His priests the power to cleanse us from sin. And in the same Gospel, He heals the centurions servant. By a simple word 'Go, and let it be done to thee according to thy faith'. Our Lord has infinite power to heal us, a power which transcends time and space. and praises the faith of the centurion.

And today we see Our Lord's power over unbridled nature. We see today his ability to put order into nature, to command it. We see His power to put peace into nature. He has the power to calm the storm, and to make the winds stop. He is absolute master of creation, because all things were made by Him.

And today He chides us for our lack of faith.

My dear faithful, the gospel of today is the very image of what we are living through today. Our Lord has entered the boat, with His disciples, to get to the other side of the lake. Our Lord has founded His Church, upon His apostles and their successors, to bring us to heaven. But in the middle of the lake, Our Lord sleeps. So Our Lord is here with us, yet he seems to sleep. He is here, in our midst, but we cannot see Him. He is as it were asleep.

And then a great storm came. A tempest. And the boat seems to sink. The winds are so great that the disciples fear for their lives. The boat begins to take on water, and all seems lost.

So it is today, my dear faithful. We are in the midst of a great storm in the Church. The winds of strange doctrines sound continuously in our ears. The waves of heresy loom larger and larger over our heads. The ancient churches [the physical buildings], in which the faith was preached for close to 1500 years or more, are used by all sorts of sects for their abominable religion. Vocations seem to have disappeared. The shepherds have become wolves, devouring the flock. Even Peter himself seems to enjoy the fact that his vessel is taking on water. Ecumenism, apostasie, heresy have entered into the bowels of the Church, into the very minds of the leading members of the Church. All seems lost. The Church seems to be sinking under these waves. We are tempted to cry out "Save us Lord, we perish!" ['Seigneur, sauvez-nous, nous périssons' - from the Gospel].

But Our Lord knows what He is doing. He is not blind to the crisis in which we find ourselves. His power is infinite. He knows everything. We have so little faith in Him.

We have seen Our Lord's mastery over nature. He can change water into wine. He can heal the most dreadful maladies. Why should we doubt Him now? If He can do all these things, He can certainly keep His Church, His most precious possession, from harm. He holds everything in existence. The whole world can not exist without Him, not even His persecutors would exist if He did not will it. He has permitted His Church to be crucified, just as He willed Himself to be crucified.

My dear faithful, the Catholic Church is not merely a human organization, but divine. It is Our Lord Himself, we are His members. We do not believe in a human being, but in the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. God Himself. The Church is also human, to be sure, but just like Our Lord also had a human nature, a human nature that could suffer and even die. But it was not possible for Our Lord to remain in the tomb. He had to rise from the dead, because He has conquered death. So too the Church may seem to die, but it will rise from this persecution to a state more glorious than before, just like Our Lord. And we have the opportunity to assist at this glorious resurrection.

Hold onto Our Lord. He sleeps now in the Church, but He has not abandoned it. He is still in the boat, even in the tempest. Humanly speaking everything is lost. The enemy is within the very walls, even the bishops themselves do not believe in Our Lord, that Our Lord is not merely human.

He sleeps because He wants us to have faith in His power. He is so powerful that He holds the world in existence while He sleeps. Yet when He sleeps it is a temptation to ignore Him, to think that He is gone. That is why we need more faith than ever before. We need to believe all the more in His power and His divinity, just like the disciples during the crucifixion. And so there is so much more the greater merit.

And He wants us to merit a great reward. In the storm, the sailors must not let their boat wander to the mercy of the waves. The must row. They must work. So for us too, we must work. We must do all in our power to keep the faith, we do all in our power to stay afloat. [i.e. not to sink].

And so, my dear faithful, we truly live in the best times to be a Catholic. Before it was relatively easy to be Catholic. One merely had to do what everybody else was doing. And often what everybody else was doing was not all that magnificent. Before it was a great temptation to be mediocre, and in a sense one could be mediocre and perhaps, just perhaps, save one's soul, but what little merit, what a waste of grace.

But that is not possible today.

Today, one must be heroic even to keep the faith. And what merit there is. What a sign of love to stay with Our Lord even when the boat seems to have sunken. Today's world is getting worse and worse, more and more difficult to be a Catholic. And so we must have more faith in Our Lord, more love of Him. And what a greater reward will be waiting for us.

St. Therese of the Enfant Jesus had but one wish which was not fulfilled. She wished that she could live at the end-times, to live in the most cruel persecution of the Church, that she could show her love for Our Lord. Such was her desires. But Our Lord chose not to give it to her. But He has given us this opportunity. Let us not waste it. Let us not disappoint St. Therese by our mediocrity. Let us do her proud. Let us love Our Lord with the generosity that she had, that we may share with her, her immense joy in heaven.

Amen.

Fr. John Jenkins

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