By Mary Woodward
On June 21, the Sunday after the terrible tragedy of Charleston’s historic Emanuel AME Church, I sat in church trying to make sense of a world gone insane with violence, turbulent politics and this most horrific crime of murdering nine innocent people who had gathered to study God’s Word by an assailant who was welcomed in by those he slaughtered.

Bishop Robert E. Guglielmone of Charleston S.C., offers a prayer while paying his respects to the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, a pastor and state senator, inside the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia, S.C., June 24. Rev. Pinckney, who was pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, was one of nine people shot and killed at the church June 17. (CNS photo/Mic Smith, The Catholic Miscellany)

And then the Liturgy of the Word began and the first reading was from Job. Poor Job – faithful to God even when God took everything away from him and cast him to the dump.
The letter from Paul that the love of Christ impels us transitioned us to the crowning jewel of the Gospel from Mark in which Jesus said to the wind and the sea, “quiet, be still.”
Reflecting on these readings, I began to wonder if God is speaking to us out of the storm again. Soon the homilist commenced to deliver the very homily I needed to hear in my troubled and fearful heart. He pointed to Charleston and the response to this vicious and unimaginable act by the family members of the murdered innocents. He described the deep witness of faith given by them as the best homily that could be given on this Sunday anywhere in our country.
Each family had the opportunity to address the young man whom their deceased loved one had embraced with the love and light of Christ that fateful night in the church and how that light was extinguished through this young man’s act of darkness, hate and evil.
One by one each family member through voices of anguish and incredible loss reached deep down into faith and offered forgiveness. Many even asked God to have mercy on his soul.
In the face of the violent storm of evil, fear, loss, peril, panic and violence, these Christians lived their faith and became still. With a calmness that only can come from that faith, each one looked evil in the face and said ‘be still my soul.’ Each one knew with a knowledge that only comes from faith that the Lord is right there with them, carrying them on and that the Lord was with their lost loved one in that moment when evil took them from this world.
That unshakeable faith was what Jesus was teaching when he slept in the boat during the storm. And when the disciples turned to him in fear saying: “Wake up, Jesus, we are perishing!” He awakened and calmed the storm on the sea and in their beings.
In that Gospel, Jesus then asks the disciples: “Why are you terrified? Do you not have faith?” The passage then says: “They were filled with great awe and said to one another, Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” The family members of those lost in Charleston answered the disciples’ question with their deeply profound faith.

Mourners cast shadows on the wall of a makeshift memorial at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., June 18. Nine people were murdered the day before during a Bible study session at the church. (CNS photo/Brian Snyder, Reuters)

Where we go from here is the next step in healing our troubled and violent world? Our state and our country are at a moment in time when we have to look within ourselves and our collective psyche and come to an honest realization that the evil of racism still exists in our communities though it may be hidden just below the surface. Our Christian faith impels us to look to Christ and follow his way. In Him we find the truth. It may not fit with what the crashing sea of our world is trying to convey, but it is what we must, with calm resolve and in faith, seek.
As the Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis approaches, will we walk forward as a people of faith who look into the storm of this evil and are able to “be still” in the knowledge that Jesus is in the boat with us? Will we be able to have honest and respectful dialogue about racism and bigotry still prevalent in our society though we may wish to believe these are in the past?
Or will we continue to be tossed about on the turbulent sea that is our world today and forget that the love of Christ impels us to act with mercy and to reach out in compassion and love?
It is easy to shout: “Wake up, Jesus, we are perishing!” It is not so easy to “Be still.” And yet we have our witnesses in Charleston who in wanting to cry out “wake up, Jesus” in the face of violence and evil were able to “be still.” Though their hearts were filled with unending grief and pain, they took solace in the truth and found strength in a faith “tried in the fire” and ready. In their actions, they are the awakened Christ saying to evil and to our violent world: “quiet.”
(Mary Woodward is the chancellor for the Diocese of Jackson.)