A Blessed Storm

Dear Our Lady of Ransom Family,

Like many of you, I have been having a hard time sleeping. Usually when that happens, I’ll use an app on my phone that plays white noise or sounds to try and drown out the overactive chatter in my brain. When I do this, my default sound is a thunderstorm. I’m not sure why, but I find thunderstorms to be comforting and relaxing. You’ll find me in my “happy place” when there happens to be a thunderstorm on my day off, and I can sit in my living room drinking a cup of tea and reading a book. Right now, however, I’m struggling to find any type of comfort in thunderstorms, as our world is in a massive storm. Who needs thunderstorm sounds when those sounds regularly emanate from the news reports or the eerie quiet of the streets outside?

Last week, Pope Francis offered an extraordinary blessing to the entire world. Before he did, he preached on the Gospel of Mark and the calming of the storm on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:35-41). We sometimes don’t realize that the Sea of Galilee was a very dangerous place. Storms would frequently arise unexpectedly, putting anyone on a boat in great danger. That sea, so central to much of the ministry of Jesus, was a place of life and prosperity – remember many of the disciples made their living off that sea – and yet, over that life and prosperity, hung the cloud of danger and uncertainty. You were cut from a different type of cloth if you were a fisherman, willing to walk into dangerous situations that others would shy away from.

In this time when you need us the most, when the world needs the Church the most, I am determined to let no storm keep us from that great sea that offers a bountiful harvest. Can you imagine right now how many people, for the first time, are seriously confronting their own powerlessness and mortality? Can you imagine how many are asking questions that the busyness of “normal” life always pressed down and kept from coming to the surface? Friends, there is bountiful harvest beginning that has never and will never be repeated in our lifetimes. For every question people have, every experience of powerlessness, every fear and anxiety that comes from confronting mortality, we have – I promise you! – a truth that brings newness and life: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16). 

It breaks my heart to see too many Churches act as if a shelter-at-home order means to shut down, leaving the faithful, leaving  anyone in need, without a way to reach out and connect. At Our Lady of Ransom, I am directing that all of our resources be pushed into the center of this storm. Many of our staff and volunteers have already remarked at how they are busier now than before the current crisis. Praise God! To dwell behind the safety of a locked door is not who we are as Catholics, and so we  will row our parish into the middle of storm, knowing that the Lord is in the boat with us.

I’m not sure what our world or our parish will look like when our boat reaches the other shore, having made it safely through this storm. However, I do know that Jesus Christ will be there; I do know that we will be there,  together. And with that knowledge, I’m confident that I can row further out into the storm. I hope you’ll join me.

In Christ,

Fr. Matt Bozovsky
Our Lady of Ransom
Pastor