"Around Him tempest rages:" Finding God in the Storms of Life (literally)

By: Br. Bruno Mello, nO.S.B.

August 11, 2021

The monks celebrated the Feast of St. Lawrence on Monday night with fraternity and conversation around the dinner table. Unseen to us while we ate, storm clouds crested the Watchung Mountains, ominously bearing down on the city of Newark in the plain below. By the time we gathered in the Abbey Church for Vespers the monastery was engulfed by black clouds and the summer evening sunlight had turned as dark as night.

Light showers quickly turned into sheets of pelting rain. As we finished the opening hymn, a couple monks frantically closed the open clerestory windows throughout the church's nave. Once they returned to their seats, an eerie stillness settled upon us in the choir stalls. Outside, the world was in tumult. Through open ground floor windows, I could see rain pouring down. Flashes of lightning reflected off the sheen of nearby buildings so that every bolt appeared to strike the street right outside the church. Loud and almost constant thunder shook the church. Inside, the monks prayed as if nothing was amiss:

They surrounded me, the snares of death;

    the anguish of the grave has found me;

        anguish and sorrow I found.

I called on the name of the LORD:

"Deliver my soul, O LORD!"   

The last line was drowned out by the roar of thunder. The storm couldn't be kept out. With each lightning strike the sound system crackled. The monks strained to sing loud enough to hear ourselves over the chaos of rain of the roof, electricity in the air, and sirens in the street. We were engulfed by the storm, yet we kept vigil, praying under the soft yellow light of our wooden floored church.

I couldn't help but think that our little church was a microcosm of the entire Church: a respite of peace in a distressed world, a small ship making her way through the raging storm, a community of love in the midst of destruction - surrounded but not overwhelmed.  

The storm outside seemed to represent something evil. It was a temptation from the devil to fill us with fear and anxiety (or to make us wonder, as I did briefly, "Did I leave my bedroom window open?"). The structure of liturgical prayer - the modal chanting, prescribed postures, and disciplined silences - was confronted by its exact opposite: the total chaos of a tempest.

When the we began the second psalm of Vespers though, that chaos was transformed into order, for at the very moment the organist began to intone the psalm, the sky erupted with a low roll of thunder of the exact same pitch. For a second, the low rumble of man-made organs pipes and the violent crash of nature were in perfect harmony, praising the Lord together. Suddenly the storm was not a threat to us - the storm was our partner in prayer.

Psalm 18 came to my mind instantly:

In my anguish I called to the LORD;

I cried to my God for help.

From His temple He heard my voice;

    my cry to Him reached His ears . . . .

He bent the heavens and came down,
    a black cloud was under His feet.
On a cherub, He rode and He flew;

He soared on the wings of the wind.

He made the darkness His covering,

    the dark waters of the clouds, His tent.

A brightness shone out before Him,

    with hailstones and flashes of fire.

The LORD then thundered in the heavens;

    the Most High let His voice be heard,

        with hail and coals of fire.

He shot His arrows, scattered the foe,

    flashed His lightnings, and put them to flight . . . .

From on high He reached down and seized me;

He drew me forth from the mighty waters.

He saved me from my powerful foe,

    from my enemies, whose strength I could not match.

And also a verse from Psalm 50:

Our God comes, and does not keep silence.

Before Him fire devours;

    around Him tempest rages.

As Christians, we are accustomed to the story of Jesus Christ and the humility of the Lord's incarnation. God became man and dwelt among us, His birth announced to shepherds, His body buried in a spare tomb, His resurrection witnessed by only a chosen few. To read these psalms about God coming to rescue His people amidst storm clouds and tempest ironically subverts our ideas about God as much as the Incarnation subverted expectations about the Messiah! 

 

So as I sat in my choir stall, patiently chanting ancient psalms and two thousand year-old canticles, I marveled that the storm around us - the storm that seemed to bring darkness and anxiety into our prayer - might be nothing other than the Lord's presence, surrounding us, consuming us, joining us in glorifying the God and Lord of all.

Our God is King of the Universe. Nothing is beyond His reach. He rides victorious on the storm clouds, He dies victorious on a cross. He is present - Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity - in the Eucharist and He is present in the heroin addict on the nod at the steps of the church. He receives praise from the mouths of monks, He is glorified by rolling thunder.

St. Paul speaks of a future in which "God will be all in all." On Monday night I heard a clap of thunder sing the Lord's praise and discovered that future is nearer than I had first believed.