"Throughout history, the Church has frequently been in difficulty; those difficulties often come because of that 'little faith' or lack of faith for which Jesus chides Peter. A Church in difficulty or crisis is, typically, a frightened Church: a Church that has lost sight of the Lord, that has fixed its gaze on another horizon, and that is awash in troubles because it is no longer looking as closely or as intently as it should be on the Risen One who comes to his people in ways they often do not expect. Then the situation is rectified and the disciples' fears are relieved (as Catholic crises through the centuries will be rectified and Catholic fears for the future relieved) by the Lord's initiative: the Risen One, the Son of God, gets into the boat of the Church, on the Sea of Galilee and throughout the millennia, and puts things right.
"Through this story, Matthew's gospel constantly reminds the Church that, for all our cleverness and skill, we are impotent in matters of salvation - that we are the saved, not the saviors, and that all attempts at self-justification come to naught. Put another way, the Church is Christ's Church, not ours, and we start sinking when we try to make it ours."
-George Weigel, Evangelical Catholicism
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