Every week during Mass, we pray the Creed. The Creed sums up what we believe as Christians, what the Church teaches, and what God has revealed to the world about Himself and the purpose of our lives. Unfortunately, most of us have become so used to the Creed that we often fail to savour the delicious truths that it contains. Today’s Gospel passage gives us an opportunity to do just that.

Towards the beginning of the Creed, we pray: “We believe in one God, the Father almighty.” Almighty is a synonym for all-powerful, omnipotent. That’s our Lord; He alone is all-powerful; nothing is difficult for Him. God teaches Job this lesson in today’s First Reading. Job has been complaining about all the bad things that have been happening to him. And God answers by reminding him that the Lord is master even of those bad things, that He controls and limits them according to His omnipotent wisdom. The ocean, in the Old Testament, because of its mystery, power, and unpredictability, was often used as a symbol for evil and chaos. But God tells Job that He has “set limits for it, and fastened the bar of its door.” Today’s Psalm takes up the same theme, poetically explaining how God “calmed the storm to a gentle breeze” and brought the terrified sailors “to their desired haven,” even when from a merely human perspective, everything seemed lost.
And the Gospel gives us a close-up view of God’s effortless control of the seemingly most uncontrollable forces on earth: with just a word, He makes the wind and the sea obey. Notice how St Mark mentions both the wind and the sea. The sea stands for the realm below the earth, below mankind’s dwelling place. The wind stands for the sky, the realm above the earth. And Jesus, the almighty Lord in whom we believe, is master of them all.

To fully grasp the awesome power Christ displays in this Gospel scene, we need to use our imagination. Few situations leave us so helpless and despairing as storms at sea. The Sea of Galilee is still known for the violence of its squalls, which arise and subside rapidly and unpredictably. It is located at the bottom of a long funnel created by rows of mountains to the north. Air traveling through the narrowing valley bursts onto the sea with the explosive force of a flash flood squeezed through a garden hose.  This experience of utter helplessness is what today’s Psalm tries to express: “His command raised up a storm wind which tossed its waves on high. They mounted up to heaven; they sank to the depths; their hearts melted away in their plight. They cried to the LORD in their distress.”

St Mark makes it quite clear that the disciples, many of whom were fishermen by trade and familiar with boats and sea storms, feared for their lives. So we can safely infer that this storm was no minor agitation. That a mere word from the Lord reins in nature’s primeval brawn shocks the helpless fishermen even more than the stormy sea had frightened them just moments before. They had seen the Lord’s miracles, they had heard His wisdom, they had witnessed His power over the human heart. But to see the most unruly powers submit like a well-trained dog — this was a lordship they had not yet even conceived of; this is the lordship of our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

We should be encouraged by this reminder that our God, our eternal Father who loves us and is always watching over us, is all-powerful. And today when we pray the Creed, let’s relish those words, praying them right from the heart: “We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth…”

But how can we apply this beautiful and encouraging truth to our daily lives? St Ignatius of Loyola, has a good piece of advice. He used to say that a true Christian should “pray as if everything depended upon God, but work as if everything depended upon himself.” This sounds like a contradiction, but it isn’t.

When life’s storms batter us, our families, and our communities, our first reaction should always be the same as the reaction of the Apostles in today’s Gospel: to go to Jesus, to wake Him up, to place our confidence in Him, through sincere, heart-to-heart prayer. He will hear us, because He is always listening. And then, having put the situation in God’s hands, the best way to show Him that we truly trust Him is to confidently do whatever we can to help achieve the outcome we think is best - whatever next step occurs to us. Today, as God renews His commitment to us in this Mass, let’s renew our confidence in Him.