With the help of two men assisting the bishop, Mother Teresa and two of her sisters picked the man up, carried him gently into the sacristy, while the bishop stalled until the mass could go on. The sobbing and shouting abated. And at the end of the ceremony, as Ed Egan was gathering his belongings, a young man came up behind him and asked, "Do you have a ride?" "No. Came on the subway," said the bishop.

So the young man took the bishop to the retired priests’ residence where he lived at 34^th Street and First avenue. "I’ve got to talk to someone," the young man said. "I was in the sacristy when the bloodied man was carried in. He had been beaten badly and his language was terrible. But never in my life had I seen anything like the way he was treated. Mother Teresa and her two sisters and the pastor and his two laymen were wonderful. They calmed the man. They washed the blood off him. They found a clean shirt and they arranged a place for him that night. It was everything that Jesus Christ had ever taught."

He paused to gain control of his emotions and went on. "I’m making a pile of money in the market," he said. "But I need to be part of what I witnessed in that sacristy. The money isn’t doing it. I need something more."

Bishop Egan invited the young man into the house and gave him a list of ways he could help make a difference in the world—from serving as a liturgist to volunteering in schools to working in homeless shelters. The young man was later ordained a priest in the Diocese of Bridgeport where Bishop Egan served between his first stint in New York and his present one. The young man died of leukemia last year and Ed Egan was wearing his pectoral cross as he preached that day.

One feeling that motivated that young man to approach the priest on that terrible day in the Bronx was fear. The kind of fear that many of us know: that for all our accomplishments, all our money and success, all our friends and trips, our lives won’t finally amount, as my Dad used to say, to a hill of beans.

It is that kind of nascent community that makes the trip across the Sea of Galilee and is also the community of faith called the church to whom Mark tells the story of the stilling of the storm. Mark has just finished recounting the revolutionary teachings of Jesus, and he now moves into a section that will be summed up with the acclamation: "What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!"

The story of the stilling of the storm occurs as the first of this series of "deeds of power". And it carries with it many of Mark’s themes: the miracle occurs away from the crowd, private, hidden; it’s not to be talked about, it is part of the "Messianic Secret"; and when the news breaks out, people are filled with amazement, awe and fear. Mark tells the story as one in which Jesus ministers directly to the church: away from the Jewish crowds on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee and the Gentile crowds on the eastern shore.

The disciples are on a trip, not of their choosing but at Jesus’ command. They are not alone, but they act as if they were. The world around them suddenly becomes one enormous storm of wind, wave and rising water. Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat, the picture of quiet confidence in the power of the God who made both land and sea.

The stilling of the storm is framed upon a double reproach. The disciples reproach Jesus: "Don’t you care about us?" And Jesus reproaches them: "Why are you afraid?" In fact, the Greek word that Jesus uses to still the storm can be interpreted as his exclaiming, "Shut up!" So he stills both the storm and the fears of the Twelve. When the story gets told in the church, however, the second use of the power of Jesus’ words is de-emphasized. "Who is this," they ask, "who has such power to make even the winds and seas obey his command?" That’s natural. Church people are like all people in that regard. When they tell a story about themselves, they don’t like to admit their fear and lack of trust.

The problem with this story as in many stories to follow is that the disciples do not understand. Their ignorance is not about missing questions on a test, not paying attention in class. Their ignorance is much more profound: they do not know who Jesus is. So immanent and destructive is this ignorance that they eventually will abandon him. This not knowing Jesus lies at the root of their cowardice and fear.

Psychologists tell us that infants come into the world with only two inborn fears—the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All other fears are either acquired or induced. There is no denying that as we grow older our fears multiply. The list is endless, isn’t it? Fear of failure, fear of losing a job, fear of illness, of responsibility, of losing a loved one, of being left alone on the shelf, of growing old, of death. A woman recently said to me, "I really don’t know what I’m afraid of. I have this nameless, shapeless anxiety that hovers over everything I do and say. It is robbing me of my energy. I feel helpless and hopeless."

Here’s the problem: we're afraid to die. So, we buy into a culture that tells us that we can avoid death if we have enough money or power or control. So, even in the church, we strive for immortality rather than resurrection. We, like the Twelve on the lake 2,000 years ago, don’t know who Jesus is. Yet, he is the One who promises not only a good life, but a good death.

"Yes," declared Henri Nouwen, "There is such a thing as a good death. We ourselves are not responsible for the way we die. We have to choose between clinging to life in such a way that death becomes nothing but failure, or letting go of life in freedom so that we can be given to others as a source of hope." Death does not have to be our final failure, our unavoidable fate. If we give ourselves to others, stop clinging to a nostalgic past, put our trust in the One who is always beckoning us into the future, then even death can become a gift. We don’t suffer well by pretending that it doesn’t hurt or pretending that we are brave and courageous. We suffer well by suffering honestly. Chesterton said that one sees great things from the valley, but only small things from the peak. It is in the valleys, in the storms that we find God.

Here’s the trick: when we move from an attitude of fear to an attitude of gratitude, we find new life.

That wonderful Irish-Catholic undertaker/poet/essayist from Milford, Michigan, Thomas Lynch, has written a new book, Bodies In Motion and At Rest. He’s one of our most honest writers and one of the most Christian—without ramming his faith down your throat or trying to convince you through soporific little illustrations—I know. In one of his pieces he talks about living as a recovering alcoholic. "What I’ve learned from sobriety, from the men and women who keep me sober, is how to pray. Blind drunks who get sober get a kind of blind faith—not so much a vision of who God is, but who God isn’t, namely me."

Mr. Lynch’s three stages of prayer speak to most of us. "When I was a child all of my prayers sounded like ‘Gimme, Gimme.’ I wanted a Jerry Mahoney puppet, to fly like Superman, and for my brothers and sisters to be adopted by other kindly parents and leave me and my father and mother alone. I got none of these things. These prayers were never answered."

Later when he was a young man, his prayers would always begin with "Show me, Lord." "I wanted a sign. I wanted God to prove Himself or Herself or Itself to me." He was a typical youth, full of outrage and arrogance and bravado. Nothing ever happened. "The proofs I prayed for never appeared. None of these prayers were ever answered."

For years, twenty of them anyway, as a new husband, a new funeral director, a new parent, as a social drinker and a working poet, Tom Lynch would pray, albeit infrequently: "Why me, God? The more I drank, the more I prayed. Why do I have to work harder, longer, for less thanks or wages? And when my inventory of ‘Why me’s’ was exhausted, I would ask on behalf of my fellow man: Why did cars crash, planes fall out of the sky, bad things happen to good people? Why, if anyone’s in charge, did children die? Or folks go homeless? Why wasn’t God listening? I wanted to know. And before I’d agree to step one foot in heaven, I had a list of things I wanted explanations for.

Well, "There’s a reason we are given two ears and one mouth."

Someone finally told him that he should say, "Thanks," and all his prayers should begin that way and never stray far from the notion that life was a gift to be grateful for. So he began giving thanks for his family, for the blessings of his household and for his children. Then the daylight and the nightfall and the weather. Then the kindness you could see in others, their foibles and their tender mercies. "I could even be grateful for my ex-wife, the tax man, the gobshites who run the world and ruin everything. The more I mouthed my thanks for them, the less they bothered me."

And you know what? Every time you say a prayer of thanks, the prayer gets answered. Someone, out of the blue, every day—maybe your wife or your best friend or someone at the office or the guy in line at the airport or something in a letter or something in the lives of your sons or your daughters or your grandchildren—someone gives out with a sign of wonder in the voice of God, in some voice other than your own, to answer your prayers. Every day, every time you just say "Thanks," you get the answer, before the darkness comes. God says, "You’re welcome." The voice says, "You’re welcome."

Floyd Brown: I once heard a minister say, "We don't know how to pray." He said we pray "Lord, take these burdens off me. I'm so tired. I've got too much work. I've got too much to do," instead of praying, "Lord, give me the ability to handle these wonderful opportunities." Do you agree that we don't know how to pray?

Eugene Winkler: I think that's true, Floyd. I think people pray constantly, but they're not sure that someone is listening or that there are answers to their prayers. To me, it comes down to trust. Faith, to me, equals trust, to put our trust in the One who promises that all things will work together for good, and we have to believe that that God is at work even in the calamities.

Brown: Touching on the other topic in your sermon: fear. If we are afraid, does that mean that we don't have enough faith?

Winkler: Oh, absolutely not. I think the thing is to name our fears, to get them out in the open. I think the worst thing we do is repress our fears or, as I was trying to say, pretend that they're not there, or that we have to be courageous rather than being honest about the things that terrify us.

Brown: Was it Franklin Roosevelt who said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself?" It's real, isn't it?

Winkler: It certainly is for everyone. Yes.

Brown: So our prayers should really be prayers of thanks.

Winkler: Absolutely. Yes. Those are the prayers that are always answered. When you thank God for what you have, and for the opportunities God has given you, God is always there and you get a new appreciation of what life is about.

Brown: Well, I've gotten a new appreciation about faith and about prayer. Thank you very much. Always a delight to have you with us.