Today Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Mark (6: 45-52) in which Jesus seeing the storm, comes to his disciples, walking on the water, and says to them, ‘Courage! It is I – do not be afraid’.

Fr Paul says the story of the walking on the water is less dramatic than the other story, of the calming of the storm while Jesus was in the boat asleep, but that is largely a surface difference. Being ‘worn out with rowing’ is a prelude to being too weak to control the boat at all, and to disaster.

The difference in the story has a helpful message for us, however. Jesus has care for us even when he is not in the boat with us; even when we are ignorant of our own peril and forget to ask for help. When he does intervene, we do not always recognise the means through which the intervention comes – as here, when the disciples think they are seeing a ghost – but even that does not matter in the end: we are still saved, because we are loved.

Today, Fr Paul says, we might just reflect on the care and love that Jesus has for us.