That day when evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Each of us can begin by imagining the storm in which they find themselves and the peace it calls for. For is there any human life without threats? And is there a single human life that has never experienced an unexpected peace, which often arrives as suddenly as the storm? Let’s imagine our storms. Let’s imagine our resources and the experiences we’ve already had with resources given to us at the height of our anguish.

This text of the calmed storm tells us infinitely more than I can say. And like a lake in a thunderstorm, it will produce in us other images and other meanings each time we read it. For you today, as each and every one of us prepares to embark on a new stage of life, I would like to recall three things.

First of all, in this excerpt from the life of Christ, we must take seriously the fact that Jesus depends on his teammates, and that this dependence enables him serenely to confront the crossing of the lake. Our starting point is trust. We could even say: we are all born from a postulate of trust. Jesus has an a priori confidence in our abilities. And so do we. We trust in the ability of each and every one of you. We embark serenely on new crossings, because you are our teammates, we are not alone on board, and each of you will participate in the life and viability of the ship on which we are all embarking together. None of us needs to worry about the ship all alone. There are many of us: our differences ensure that we complement each other, our fatigue is borne by the energy of others, and vice versa.

So we are carried along by God’s original trust, which inspires our mutual confidence. Even in the storm! For the storm is coming, and it is not the storm that disturbs Jesus’ sleep. If he is still asleep, it’s not out of carelessness or unawareness, but out of trust. Confidence in our resources, our capacity for action and reaction. Remember this: someone has confidence in your ability to find solutions to the problems you’re about to encounter, to weather alive and intact the storms that lie ahead of you.

Third and final point: what awakens Jesus is us. It’s our cry, our call. And he responds. When we are afraid, yes, he comes. He accords less importance to the storm than to our emotions, our fears, our dread. The text seems to suggest a rebuke, a regret on his part: "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" But imagine him saying this with the smile of a trusting friend. A friend who knows that we often need a reminder, a reassurance, the word of another who believes that we are passing through this storm just when I doubt it....

No Lord, we don’t have faith yet. We’re still in the process of having faith, and we will never have it once and for all. We need your Word to commit to it once again. We need our teammates when our strength and faith falter. We need to relay trust to each other. When my trust wavers, one of you will carry this Word for me. And when the storm becomes too violent and we are all afraid, the most faithful teammate, who is also the one with the greatest trust, wakes up, reveals himself and smiles at us.

 Has the trust shown to me one day ever helped me weather a storm?
 How can I, too, relay such trust to others?

Meditation by Marion Muller Colard