2025 Women of Hope Retreat

Published: February 1, 2025

Bishop Anthony B. Taylor preached the following homily at Christ the King Church in Little Rock on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025. It is based on the readings for Saturday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time, Cycle I.

Bishop Taylor

There is no part of the world exempt from disasters. We have tornados, droughts and wildfires like in California. Other places have hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and mudslides, and these are just the natural disasters. The worst disasters are those caused by humans, for instance war, persecution, genocide, racism, ethnic conflict and economic exploitation, unjust laws and plane crashes.

But as we see in the Scriptures, Jesus is more powerful than any disaster. In today's Gospel it is a natural disaster that threatens. His disciples had been fishermen and so they were very familiar with storms on the Sea of Galilee, but this storm was more than even they could handle, and they used boats for a living. But it wasn't more than Jesus could handle. When all hope seemed to be lost, he stood up and calmed the storm.

No person who lives long enough makes it through this life without eventually having to face storms too powerful for us to handle on our own. Some of these are personal disasters that are more devastating than anything nature could ever send our way. Don't raise your hands, but how many of you have ever been through a stormy divorce or been a victim of an abusive parent.

Have you ever felt trapped and alone and powerless; at the mercy of the winds, so to speak? How many of you have someone you love who is mentally ill or addicted to drugs or alcohol? How many of you have not-yet-healed inner wounds caused by sins that you yourself committed and now regret bitterly?

I could give you a long list of painful situations. But you are women of hope, the theme of this retreat, and so I can proclaim to you that Jesus is more powerful than any storm you will ever have to face.

In today's Gospel, Jesus was apparently so tired that it looked like he was going to just sleep right through the storm that was about to capsize their boat, so his disciples woke him, shouting: "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" And as it turns out, not only did he care, but he was also able to do something about it.

He calmed that storm because calming that storm served God's purposes. His disciples discovered something new about Jesus. They were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this whom even the wind and sea obey?" But Jesus will not calm every storm because sometimes it is the storm itself that serves God's purposes.

That's the mystery of the cross. Most of the disciples saved that day from drowning will one day die a martyr's death, perish in a different kind of storm, but a storm, nonetheless.

When we embrace suffering that serves God's purposes, the sacrifices we have to make may be very great and even tragic, but unlike other storms, these storms that are the price of faithfulness do not lead to disaster — far from it. When you embrace with love and hope and trust whatever cross God has picked out specifically for you, that cross becomes redemptive — in your own life and in the lives of others.

As we see in today's Gospel, sometimes it serves God's purposes to calm storms when we cry out to him for help. But there are also plenty of other times when the storm itself serves God's purposes and faithfulness to him requires us simply to embrace that cross with love.