Let Us Cross to the Other Side

A CCM student encounters the living Christ - a guest post:

A couple of weekends ago, I had the great opportunity to attend a FOCUS Conference. The theme for this year’s conference was “Answer the Call.” Mass on Saturday was celebrated by the bishop of my diocese, Bishop Johnston. The homily Bishop Johnston gave for the Gospel reading was incredible, and he really broke down the Gospel in such a practical manner that it hit me in a number of ways. I will share the biggest way the Gospel and his homily impacted me after you read the actual passage.

Mark 4:35-41: On that day, as evening drew on, he said to them, "Let us cross to the other side." Leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat just as he was. And other boats were with him. A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Quiet! Be still!" The wind ceased and there was great calm. Then he asked them, "Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?" They were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?"

Bishop Johnston broke down this passage by diving into the three things Jesus says during this episode. First, Bishop Johnston talks about how Mark notes that “evening drew on.” Mark makes the point that it is dark. People normally only travel on water during the day. It’s dangerous to get on a boat on the water at night. Yet, Jesus says to them, “Let us cross to the other side.”

It is quite perplexing that Jesus would ask them to cross to the other side over night. I’m sure many disciples were questioning to themselves, “Why not wait until morning when there is light?” However, the disciples show trust in Jesus by leaving the crowd and getting on the boat.

Bishop Johnston relates this part of the passage to our own lives. There are going to be many different points in our lives when Jesus calls out to us saying, “Let us cross to the other side.” Jesus might ask us to leave the comfort and normalcy of where we are in our lives and ask us to do something more challenging and unfamiliar. He might ask us to go out into the dark and unknown with him, as he did with his disciples. When Jesus calls out to us in this manner, it is important to have faith and get on the boat with him so to speak. Bishop Johnston went on relating this quote to many different examples. He kept repeating the words of Jesus, “Let us cross to the other side.” It really struck a chord with me each time he repeated it. … “Let us cross to the other side.”

Moving on to the second quote, Bishop Johnston talks about how the disciples start getting worried that they are perishing in this great storm. Jesus is actually sleeping through the storm they are frightened of, so they wake him up and tell him of their peril. Jesus wakes up and says to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!”

Bishop Johnston went on to say that if we relate the storm the disciples were experiencing to unrest and worries in our hearts, or the storms of our hearts, we can take much from what Jesus says. When things start getting crazy, we freak out. We worry. We lose faith. However, during these times Jesus comes to our hearts and tells our fears and doubts, “Quiet! Be still!” Jesus calms the storms and unrest in our hearts.

The last thing Jesus says in this passage is, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” We should be able to see all that God has done for us and have faith in Christ that he will never forsake us. It was Jesus that asked us to cross to other side in the first place. He is not going to abandon us on that journey. It is vital to remember that Christ is always with us.

So after I heard Bishop Johnston give that homily, for the rest of the conference and then on into the following week I had those words Jesus spoke to his disciples running through my head – “Let us cross to the other side.” I kept thinking about the homily and those words in particular over and over again, and I kept feeling this pull at my heart. I knew what it was that Jesus was calling me to start doing after that homily. It just took a few days to soak in and build up enough courage to go out and start doing what I felt Jesus was asking of me. This is the call I heard. This is what Jesus was asking me to cross to the other side for.

Evangelization – Talking about my faith

I have been very blessed. My family is great. I have been privileged to grow up in a strong Catholic family. My mom and dad have been together for 30+ years now. I have two older brothers that have always been incredible role models, and I have a younger sister that has the heart of a champion.

I remember very vividly when I was young, maybe 4 or 5, praying together with my mom and my two older brothers at night before I went to bed. Yet as we got older, things got busy, and I don’t recollect praying together with them once I got into elementary school. Everyone had homework. My brothers started playing basketball and baseball almost year around. Life just got busy at the Van de Ven household. We always had places to be and things to do, and we still do. That is they way everything has been since I was young.

As for our faith lives, we always went to Mass together on Sundays as a family (very important!), and we always prayed together before meals. Other than those two events, we did not pray or read the Bible together as a family. I am not at all trying to say that my parents didn’t do enough for me. My parents did a remarkable job raising all of us. They showed by example how to live out our faith and be virtuous. My mother cares and loves us unconditionally and has always done the best for us. And my father has been the best example I have of a husband laying down his life for his wife and family day in and day out. He has always been self-less. I am just pointing out that our lives got busy, and praying together outside of mass wasn’t something we were familiar with. Growing up we still had a lot of religious instruction, it was just on our own. During elementary school and all the way through high school, I had religion class two days a week and daily mass three days a week.

However, even though I had religion class and daily mass so often, they became just two more things in my busy schedule. Growing up from elementary to high school, my Catholic faith became just another thing that I did. Along with basketball practice, homework, and hanging out with friends on weekends, my faith was just another thing to do. I pulled it out when I needed to (religion class, church, youth group, and youth conferences), and then put it back when I was done with it for the time being. It wasn’t much different than any other subject in school. Like history or math, I learned about my faith, did my homework, passed the tests (confirmation), and went on with my life.

About four years ago, though, before my junior year of high school, I had my first true encounter with Christ at a Steubenville youth conference during Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. My faith became much more real than I had ever known it to be. I felt a pull at my heart to develop a deeper relationship with the person of Christ. I had always learned about my faith, but that first encounter made my faith much more intimate and real. Since that conference, I have been steadily coming into a greater understanding and appreciation that my Catholic faith and my relationship with Jesus Christ isn’t another thing that I do, but instead it is literally who I am. My faith is a part of me, just as much as my heart or arm or any other part of my body. It is who I am. My faith defines my being.

Yet, even over the last four years and all the growth I have had in my faith life, it has always been something I have kept to myself. It has all been very internal. I don’t have any experience talking about my faith to other people, not even my family or friends. I try to live my life in such a way that they are able to see how God has changed me, yet I have never articulated how having this deep, personal relationship with Christ affects me.

My Catholic faith has become a part of me that I am very passionate about. All of the other things I am passionate about in my life, whether it be my family, basketball, a TV show, etc., I have absolutely no problem talking about with other people. I can talk about everything I am passionate about very easily, except for my Catholic faith and my relationship with Christ. I suppose that I attribute that to not openly talking about my faith with my family and friends growing up. It has always been a personal thing.

That brings me back to Bishop Johnston’s homily. “Let us cross to the other side.” Since that homily, I have felt his pull at my heart that it is time to start reaching out and talking about my faith openly with others. This is how Jesus is asking me to cross to the other side. It is an unknown path, much like the dark waters the disciples were asked to cross, but I have faith that Jesus will not abandon me.

My whole faith life has been building up to this point. Over the last four years and the last year especially, I have become so much more in tune with the fact that Jesus Christ is a real person. God came down from heaven! The second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, came down to Earth to be a man among us to show us how to truly live and how to be completely self-giving! But He didn’t stop there. Christ died on a cross for my sin so that I may have life! This is real! This isn’t some story book fairy tale. This happened 2,000 years ago. Curtis Martin lays out a great argument on the reality of Jesus in his book Made for More. I suggest reading it. I don’t have the time to go into details here, but it laid everything out for me in such manner that I couldn’t debate it. Jesus Christ is real, and he died for me. WHAT GREATER THING IS THERE TO TALK ABOUT?

Yet in our society, it is taboo to talk about your faith to other people. You can’t offend people, and if you tell others what you believe you might offend someone. But what greater thing is there to talk about than our salvation!? What greater thing is there to talk about and tell others than the fact that my self-worth is the Son of God dying on a cross! WOW! People talk about other things they are passionate about all the time, but those things truly don’t stack up to God’s tremendous love. Everything is so secondary to God. It is like comparing the sun to a grain of sand, and that still doesn’t express the magnitude.

For me then, it came down to this. Curtis Martin opened up a talk I listened to with this phrase. Do you really believe that what you believe is really real? Do you really believe .. that what you believe … is really real? Think about it. Because if what you really believe is really real, it should blow you away, and it should change you down to the very core of your being.

That is where I am in my faith. I could put my faith life into an analogy with a train. It is as if my whole life I learned about this train. All my religion teachers gave me this long history of this train, yet I never saw the train or even heard the train. All I ever saw were the tracks. The tracks showed the history and future of where the train had been and where it was going to go, but yet I never saw or heard this train. The tracks didn’t make the train real, but it was a nice thing to believe in. The idea of the train seemed nice and seemed to make sense with the tracks, but I could not tell you whether the train was real or not. Then about four years ago, I heard the train whistle way off in the distance, and that sound reverberated through my entire being. “Woah! Maybe this train is actually real!” I thought to myself. So I kept with the history and future of the tracks and tried to learn more about the actual train. All the while over the last four years, I would hear the train as I searched for it, and it always sounded as if it were getting closer. The train whistle was louder. Yet there were times when I got distracted with other noises and didn’t hear the train any more, and so there were times I thought that the train whistle I heard might have been something else. However, I would keep the faith that what I heard was the train whistle, and then I would hear the whistle again, louder and clearer than ever before. Over the last year, through more tireless searching, the train has come even closer. I could very distinctly hear the train whistle and know it was a train whistle, and I even began to hear the rumbling of the train on the tracks in the distance. So through faith I knew the train had to be real, even though I still hadn’t seen it. But now in my life, I can very much attest that the train is real. It is rushing past me as I stand along the tracks. I can not only see the train, but I can feel the immense power of the train as it rushes past me. I no longer have any doubt the train is real. Just as I no longer have any doubt that my faith is real, that Jesus is a real person that walked on this Earth and died for my sin so that I might have life.

So that is where I am. And now I must go forth from here and not only live out my faith but tell people that God is real and is near to each of us. I have seen the train and felt its power, so to speak, and need to let others know about the train. I felt as if during that Saturday Mass, Jesus was speaking to me through that Gospel to cross to the other side of my faith, and to not let it just be an internal thing but to make it an external thing. It might be a dark, stormy trip, but I have courage and faith that Jesus will calm the worries, doubts, and storms of my heart and lead me to the other side. One thing I have learned through my faith is that my life isn’t about me and has never been about me, but instead is about what Christ can do through me. So I have to let go of all the worries and inhibitions I may have about crossing to the other side so that I can get on the boat and go.

I hope my story may give you courage to cross to the other side of whatever Jesus is calling you to!

 This is a great witness that Christ is real and his love and mercy can truly transform our hearts.