Lectio Divina
Tuesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Theme: “violent”
1. Lectio
Gospel: Matthew 8:23–27
> “Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep.”
Matthew does not simply tell me that a storm arose. He deliberately calls it a violent storm. I cannot help but smile at the precision of the Evangelist. It reminds me of Colonel Jessup’s famous retort in A Few Good Men: “Is there another kind?” Storms, by their very nature, are violent. They interrupt peace, expose weakness, and reveal what or whom I truly trust.
Yet the most astonishing detail is not the storm but the Savior. The sea is in turmoil while Christ sleeps. The disciples assume His sleep means indifference. Instead, it reveals perfect confidence in His Father’s providence. Before Jesus calms the wind, He first calms the fear of His disciples. The greatest violence in the story is not the waves outside the boat but the panic within it.
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2. Meditatio
Here at The Glenn I practice agriculture. Yet the Gospel forces me to ask a question I would rather avoid: What kind of agriculture am I practicing? Is it violent?
Recently President Trump signed the Executive Order, Advancing Regenerative Agriculture and Strengthening American Farm Resilience. Its stated purpose is to expand regenerative farming practices, accelerate precision agriculture, and encourage methods that restore rather than exhaust the land. Whatever one thinks of the policy itself, it raises a profoundly spiritual question. Every transition from exploitation to restoration feels like sailing into a storm. Regenerative agriculture asks me to think not only about the next harvest but about the next generation. That requires patience, sacrifice, and trust.
Most of us nod approvingly at the phrase regenerative agriculture until we realize that genuine change affects food supplies, production methods, costs, and familiar habits. Suddenly we become like the disciples. We would rather let Jesus sleep than allow Him to disturb the comfortable systems we have built. We fear the storm that accompanies conversion more than the violence of remaining as we are.
Pope Francis observed in Laudato Si’ that “the violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life.” The earth often bears the scars of the storms first unleashed within the human heart.
Saint Paul VI carried this insight further in Octogesima Adveniens. The Gospel, though proclaimed in another age, is never outdated because it continues to judge every age according to what truly humanizes or dehumanizes the person. Social Doctrine is not content with admiring peace from a distance; it asks whether our economic, political, and cultural structures promote human dignity or become what Saint John Paul II would later call “structures of sin.” Peace cannot merely be preached; it must be cultivated.
As I recover from illness, care for lambs, tend soil, and watch guardian dogs protect the flock, I discover that the greatest storms are rarely meteorological. They are spiritual. Every day I choose whether to cultivate domination or stewardship, fear or trust, consumption or communion.
The irony is delightful in a Chestertonian way. The disciples believed they were about to die because Jesus was asleep. In truth, they were safest precisely because He was in the boat. Likewise, I often imagine that everything depends upon my frantic activity at The Glenn. Yet perhaps the first regenerative act God asks of me is simply to let Him remain Lord of the boat while I cease pretending to captain the sea.
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3. Oratio (Prayer)
Lord Jesus,
When the storms of my own making become violent, I immediately begin rowing harder instead of looking toward You.
Awaken me before You awaken the sea.
Heal the violence that still lives within my heart—the violence that seeks control rather than communion, efficiency rather than mercy, certainty rather than faith.
Teach me to cultivate the land, my family, my Church, and my own soul with the patience of a gardener instead of the force of a conqueror.
Grant me the courage to embrace those difficult changes that restore rather than merely preserve.
And when You seem asleep, remind me that Your silence is never Your absence.
Speak only the word, and let there be a great calm within me.
Amen.
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4. Contemplatio (Chestertonian Synthesis)
Chesterton loved exposing the comic reversals hidden within Christianity, and today’s Gospel offers one of the finest.
The only truly calm man in the middle of a violent storm is the Carpenter.
The professional fishermen panic while the carpenter sleeps.
That is because Christ’s peace is never the absence of violence; it is the presence of Someone greater than violence.
Today the Church remembers the First Holy Martyrs of the Roman Church, those anonymous Christians who suffered under Nero after the Great Fire of Rome. They were not spared violent storms. They were wrapped in animal skins, torn by beasts, crucified, and burned as living torches. Yet history remembers Nero as a symbol of passing brutality, while these unnamed disciples became living stones in the Church Christ promised the gates of hell would never overcome.
Violence always believes it has the final word.
It never does.
The storm passes.
The empire falls.
The Gospel remains.
Perhaps that is why Jesus could sleep.
And perhaps that is why I, too, can lay down my frantic striving at The Glenn, trusting that the One who commands the wind is also quietly cultivating the soil of my own heart.
Tuesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
