Scripture: Mark 4: 35-41

On that day, as evening approached, he said to them, “Let us cross over to the other side.” ³⁶ And so, leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat just as he was. Some other boats joined them. ³⁷ Suddenly, a great storm came up, and the waves were crashing over the boat so that it was almost swamped. ³⁸ Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They awakened him and said, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹ Then he stood up and rebuked the wind, and he said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!” The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰ He said to them, “Why are you so frightened? Are you still without faith?” ⁴¹ They were filled with awe and said to one another, “Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.”

Meditation

From his article, "The Ecological Significance of the Eucharist," by Daniel Horan OFM

The Sacraments are a privileged way in which nature is taken up by God to become a means of mediating supernatural life. Through our worship of God, we are invited to embrace the world on a different plane. … For Christians, all the creatures of the material universe find their true meaning in the incarnate Word, for the Son of God has incorporated in his person part of the material world, planting in it a seed of definitive transformation.

In a way, just as we can say with confidence that Christmas is a solemnity of all God's creatures…, we can also say that the sacramental life of the church has ecological import. For this reason, when we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, we celebrating something of cosmic significance.

The Eucharist is not simply a means by which humanity receives the sacramental presence of Christ, as if the bread and wine were mere vehicles of the divine for us humans alone. Rather, the Eucharist is the privileged place where God is now present to our world as part of that world. As Francis explains, again in Laudato Si':

It is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation. Grace, which tends to manifest itself tangibly, found unsurpassable expression when God himself became man and gave himself as food for his creatures. The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter. He comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours. In the Eucharist, fullness is already achieved; it is the living center of the universe, the overflowing core of love and of inexhaustible life. Joined to the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God. Indeed the Eucharist is itself an act of cosmic love.

Musical Selection (lyrics in video)

Prayer