FROM THE PASTOR’S DESK
My Dear Parishioners
Today the Church begins placing a new theme in front of us, a theme for us to pay attention to for the next several weeks. Remember where we’ve been. Jesus has arrived on the scene. He has gone around teaching and healing, sent out the disciples, announced that the Kingdom is found not in a political structure but in a relationship with him, and revealed his glory in the Transfiguration. But now the question is: Can we trust this man? Can we entrust our lives to him?
We often take this for granted. We come to church, we “believe in Jesus,” and go along with it. But listen to the people in the Gospels. They ask, “Isn’t he just the carpenter’s son? Didn’t we watch this kid grow up?” (cf. Mt 13:55). Jesus doesn’t simply ask us to believe certain facts about him or follow better rules so that we’re “better people.” He asks something much more demanding: to iterally place our lives into his hands.
This is the question Matthew’s Gospel places before us over these Sundays: Do we trust this man? Do we have faith in him?
An image that has helped me is a story about Charles Blondin, the famous nineteenthcentury tightrope walker. He amazed crowds by crossing Niagara Falls. He would even ride a bike across and pushed a wheelbarrow full of rocks across the rope. After one crossing he asked the crowd, “How many of you think I can do it again?” Everyone shouted, “Yes!” Then he asked, “Do you think I could do it with a person in the wheelbarrow?” Again, the crowd cheered. Blondin dumped out the rocks and asked for a volunteer.
No one moved.
The issue was faith. The crowd enjoyed watching Blondin, but they would not participate. He invited someone to entrust his life to him, and no one could.
We often get the order backwards. We say they were afraid, and therefore they didn’t trust him. But really, they didn’t trust him, and because of that they were afraid.
Research in psychology and neurobiology helps explain this. Dr. Susan Johnson’s work on attachment theory shows that when a secure relationship is threatened, the nervous system enters what she calls a “primal panic,” triggering the amygdala—the brain’s fear center. Fear is not the cause but the response to an insecure bond.
The opposite is equally fascinating. In dangerous or painful situations, if the person with whom we share a deep bond is present, the amygdala is activated far less—sometimes not at all. A secure relationship drives out fear.
All this sheds light on today’s Gospel. The disciples had lived with Jesus, heard his teaching, witnessed his miracles, and even seen him calm a storm before (cf. Mt 8:23-27). His arrival should have driven out fear.
Instead, they are terrified. Peter begins walking toward Jesus but, seeing the wind, becomes frightened and starts to sink. Notice what Jesus says. He does not rebuke Peter for being afraid. He asks, “Why did you doubt?” The issue is not fear but faith.
Their fear reveals the real issue: they have not yet entrusted themselves completely to Jesus.
When I felt called to the priesthood, the deepest issue was not the sacrifices involved. The issue was that I did not fully trust Jesus. Deep down, I feared he would not hold up his end of the bargain. Even today, whenever the Lord asks something difficult of me, the fear I sometimes experience reveals that I still have room to grow in entrusting my life to him.
For each of us, this is the great challenge. Not merely believing certain ideas about Jesus or following the teachings of the Church, but asking: Can we trust this man? Can we entrust our lives to
him?
It is one thing to go to Mass on Sundays. It is one thing to try to be a good person. But what Jesus desires—and what our hearts truly long for— is that we entrust our lives to him.
In the Gospel, a father brings his possessed son to Jesus. Jesus tells him, “Everything is possible for one who believes.” Immediately the man cries out, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” Those words can become our own prayer: “I do believe. Help my unbelief.”
Peace,
Fr. Monteleone
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