A small, fragile boat, far from shore, tossed about by great wind and storm.  There’s hardly a better image for how the difficulties and uncertainties of our life, make us feel.  Sometimes storms rise around us.  Sometimes storms rise within us.  It doesn’t always seem that our weak defenses can hold up.  At times, the waves break over us: personal weaknesses, professional failures, financial uncertainties, illness, brokenness in our family.  These things are going to be part of our lives, because we live with the consequences of sin all around us: we live in a fallen world.  But we also live in a redeemed world.  The world is fallen; the world is redeemed. 

In light of these two truths, when the storms of life start rising up, two choices lie before us.  We can be cynical and pessimistic: we can give up on pursuing meaning and significance and poetry, if you will, in life, and just try to maximize our comfort for as long as we can hold on.  That’s the easy choice: the boring and mediocre choice.  It’s the choice to give in to the fallenness.  Or, we can lean into the redemption: we can have the reckless courage to embrace the adventure of Christian hope.  We can choose to continue, impelled by the love of Christ, as St. Paul says.  We can embrace a really rather subversive and absolutely counter-cultural idea: that our sufferings and our difficulties don’t have to be meaningless.  If difficulties come, then the grace of God will come more abundantly as well.  Divine help will always be enough for the obstacles and difficulties which the world places in our way.  We even dare to say, that in a sense, it’s good that there are difficulties for us, because where sin increases, grace abounds all the more: where we struggle, there we grow; where the cross is, there is fullness of life.  If we remember that God is always with us, always next to us, sharing our voyage, the sun will always be shining, and deep below the roaring and destructive waves, peace and calm will reign in our souls.  Christ is always waiting quietly in our boat with us. Wake him, and he will rebuke the storm and restore peace in our lives.  Wake him with prayer.  Insist again and again like a nagging child.  Help me, Lord.  Help me, Lord.  Calm these storms. 

In these moments we should also call upon Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary.  If the winds of temptation and difficulty arise, we should fix our eyes upon the one who is called the Star of the Sea, upon Mary: With her for a guide, we will not go astray: she who remained peaceful and hopeful even as she endured the bitterest of sorrows.  If she holds our hand, we cannot fall.  Under her protection, we have nothing to fear.  If we can’t get there on our own, she, Our Lady of Peace, will lead us to the tranquility of trust in Christ, her Son and our King. 

And this tranquility is the greatest gift that we can give to the noisy and disturbed world around us.  Our intimate friendship and trust in God will give us a calmness and a strength, and this will make us a firm rock for many around us.  We should never forget that, today especially, the Lord needs strong and courageous souls who refuse to settle for mediocrity, who want the peace of Christ and who keep striving for it.  Our love, our calmness, our joy, our quiet faithfulness can be infectious.  This peace is what everybody wants, but many people don’t know it, don’t recognize that this what they truly need.  Our friends, our family: no matter how successful they are on a human level, their hearts will always remain fundamentally restless, until they rest in God.  And we are called to apostles of this peace, the peace of Christ, peace which comes from our trust and faithfulness in God.  Christ, give us this peace.  Christ, help us to share this peace with everyone in our lives.  Holy Mary, Queen of Peace and Star of the Sea, pray for us.