Hush-a-Bye, Baby

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, June 23rd, 2024:
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Psalm 107

R. Give thanks to the Lord; his steadfast love endures forever.

Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the mighty waters; they saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep.

R. Give thanks to the Lord; his steadfast love endures forever.

For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven and they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their calamity.

R. Give thanks to the Lord; his steadfast love endures forever.

Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.

R. Give thanks to the Lord; his steadfast love endures forever.

Then they were glad when it grew calm, and he brought them to their desired haven. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to the children of Adam.

​R. Give thanks to the Lord; his steadfast love endures forever.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

In my translation of the Responsorial Psalm for this Sunday, the psalmist writes, “He hushed the storm.” In other translations it might be “calmed” or “quieted” – but I like “hushed,” mostly because it reminds me of the old lady in the children’s book Goodnight Moon.

Hush is such a gentle word, a lullaby word. Reading it made me want to see what the word in Hebrew would have been, what a young Mary would have said to a wailing Infant Jesus. What I found was intriguing. In the Hebrew, the line reads, “He made the storm a whisper.”

Now, we humans have a mixed relationship with whispers. Between plotters, they’re dark and devious. Between gossipers, they’re destructive. Between spouses, they’re intimate. Between children, they’re adorable. But between us and God, they’re complicated.

In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis says, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” In one of the most famous passages of The Confessions, St. Augustine opines, “You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.”

As Lewis points out, God’s whispers seem quite pleasant but, when God gets shouty, we find it scary and we want it to stop. However, as Augustine says, sometimes whispering isn’t going to be heard. Even if we’re trying to listen (as do the very holiest among us, which I am not), sometimes a good, clear yell from God is exactly what we need.

In Scripture, the image of ships on stormy seas conveys humanity’s powerlessness in the face of forces much greater than ourselves. We, the Church, the barque of Peter, are the imperiled sailors tossed about on waves of scandal, dissent, doubt, sin, and fear. When God stills the sea, as in this Psalm or in the Gospels, we see it as a sign of His mighty power over chaos and death. He makes the scary, loud thing go away and brings us into the Friendly Harbour - heaven, in this case, and not the home port of Theodore Tugboat.

I can’t help but think of God’s revelation to Elijah in 1 Kings. The Lord was not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, but in the still small voice. God didn’t make the loud, scary thing go away at all. He didn’t silence it or muzzle it as Jesus does with the demons. In the storm, God was preparing a whisper. Perhaps He had been shouting and changed tactics because we sailors beseeched him or perhaps, like Elijah, He was preparing our ears to hear him in the quiet port.

So when God brings you out of one of your life’s storms, spend a while in the harbour. God’s probably been wanting to talk for a while, and He’s been working up to a big, whopping whisper.

​
Kate Mosher

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