“And he awoke and
rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the
wind ceased, and there was a great calm." St. Mark 4:39
In the
Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
The monument stood right at the
waterfront, eight columns of black granite, each year followed by name upon
name. A central column was marked with
words taken from today’s Psalm: "Dedicated to the memory of those who have
gone down to the sea in ships and who have never returned and as a tribute to
those who continue to occupy their business in the great waters." The small city of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia,
where we vacationed a few summers ago, faces onto the North Atlantic. With a fine harbor, its wealth has long lay
in the region’s cod fisheries, the world’s most abundant for many generations.
But the sea takes its toll, as those
who live on it and by it know better than the rest of us. Fortunes have been made on the waters, but
they have brought awful tragedy as well.
I expect there was a member of every one of Lunenburg’s old families
carved on one of those granite columns.
He might have been a seasoned helmsman or maybe a fresh-faced boy who
found himself in the wrong place when the ever-unpredictable sea showed its
full fury. Even today, every sailor who
goes down to the dock passes by those names—a somber warning of the perils that
may lay ahead. The fisherman must learn to
respect the sea, to know his place before it.
It’s no wonder that all the ancient pagans had a god of the sea—and a
fierce one at that.
