Sunday evening, when I was reading the Gospel for the next day, something struck me. We had the death of John the Baptist, now feeding of the five thousand, which means that on Tuesday… Jesus walks on the water! And yes. Today, when in a moment, all of us without voting rights will gather in the chapel near the chapter room waiting for the new elected Superior General, Jesus will happily walk on water toward his disciples. But that’s nothing. After all, He is God, His Father created the world, breaking the laws of nature is a piece of cake for Him. Much more interesting is what Peter does. Because Peter is an ordinary fisherman, sometimes too ambitious, sometimes simply cowardly. And such a Peter looks at Jesus and can, just like Him, walk on water. Until he is looking at Jesus…
It is an incredible lesson for us! I think coming out of the boat was not easy. Just like Zacchaeus, who was mentioned at the final Mass of WYD in Pope Francis’s homily, he had to ask a lot of questions: What if I fail? Maybe I shouldn’t be jumping the gun? And what if they laugh at me? He had a thousand reasons to stay in the boat and be quiet, but he came out and put his feet on the water to make the impossible a reality. For a moment he stopped thinking about himself, looked at Jesus and thought, „I want like that!”.
We have no idea what awaits us tomorrow, we do not know what extraordinary things we will be called to. If, however, instead of focusing only on our fears and concerns, we look at Jesus and say, „I want like that!„, nothing will stop us from fulfilling our mission. May we want to be like Jesus who heals, preaches the good news to the poor, picks up the sinner, and finally gives His life in love. To do all this we definitely need to get up from our comfortable sofas, take our boat and put out into deep water, but more and more often it seems to me that sometimes we have to also walk on the water.
