The stilling of the tempest (Mark 4:35; Luke 8:22). St. Mark and St. Luke both place the incident after the series of parables which St. Matthew records in Matthew 13. This is at once one of the best-attested miracles, and one of the most incomprehensible to those who desire to limit our Lord's miracles to those of healing. It is perhaps possible to regard the cessation of the storm as a fortunate coincidence, but it is certain that Jesus Himself did not take this view of it. He rebuked the wind and sea, showing that He regarded Himself as the Lord of physical nature as well as of the spiritual world. By stilling the storm Christ showed that, behind the inexorable and awful manifestations of nature, storm, pestilence, volcanic eruptions, and sudden death, which seem to treat man's sufferings with indifference, there is the loving hand of divine providence. In the last resort nature is subject to God's holy and righteous will.
The miracle is also a parable, setting forth Christ as a giver of peace and safety, both to individuals and to His Church. St. Augustine (400 a.d.) says, 'We are sailing in this life as through a sea, and the wind rises, and storms of temptation are not wanting. Whence is this, save because Jesus is sleeping in thee, i.e. thy faith in Jesus is slumbering in thy heart? Rouse Him and say, Master, we perish. He will awaken, that is, thy faith Will return to thee, and the danger will be over.' Tertullian (200 a.d.) says, 'But that little ship presented a figure of the Church, in that she is disquieted in the sea, i.e. in the world, by the waves, i.e. by persecutions and temptations, the Lord patiently sleeping, as it were until roused at last by the prayers of the saints He checks the world, and restores tranquillity to His own.'