The psalms are full of this imagery of desperation in deep water. To the Hebrew mind, water was a natural image of anything dreadful, terrifying, destructive. The sea especially for them was a reminder of the…
At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, according to St. Matthew, Jesus speaks of a wise man who built his house on rock. Rain came, floods rose, gales blew, and hurled themselves against that house, and it did not fall (7:25). Now today we hear him speaking of…
Today’s liturgy offers us the vision of Isaiah in the Temple as an implied commentary on the Gospel scene in Peter’s boat. The parallel is a bold one, because it suggests that the man Jesus is to be identified with the transcendent God of Israel…
Joseph Ratzinger, commenting on this passage, observes that our canonical Greek text must derive from an Aramaic original. There is a direct citation of Aramaic in the name “Simon Bar-Jonah”. There are also typical Aramaic…
