The Lord's calling - vocation - always presents itself like this: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Yes: a vocation demands self-denial, sacrifice. But how pleasant that sacrifice turns out to be -- Gaudium cum pace, joy and peace -- if that self-giving is complete. (Furrow, 8)
If you agree to let God take command of your boat, if you let him be the master, how safe you will be!... even when he seems to have gone away, to have fallen asleep, to be unconcerned; even though a storm is rising and it’s pitch dark all around you. St Mark tells us how once the apostles were in just such circumstances and Jesus ‘when the night had reached its fourth quarter, seeing them hard put to it with rowing (for the wind was against them), came to them walking on the sea... Take courage, he said, it is myself; do not be afraid. So he came to them on board the boat, and thereupon the wind dropped’.
My children, so many things happen to us here on earth!... I could tell you so many tales of sorrow, of suffering, of ill treatment, of martyrdom — and I mean it literally — of the heroism of many souls. In our mind’s eye we sometimes get the impression that Jesus is asleep, that he does not hear us. But St Luke describes how the Lord looks after his own. ‘When they (the disciples), were sailing, he slept. And there came down a storm of wind upon the lake and they began to ship water perilously. They came and awakened him saying, Master, we perish! But Jesus arising, rebuked the wind and the rage of the water. And it ceased and there was a calm. And he said to them, Where is your faith?’
If we give ourselves to him, he will give himself to us. We must trust the Master completely, place ourselves unreservedly in his hands; show him by our actions that the boat is his; that we want him to do as he pleases with all we possess. (Friends of God, 22)
