Daily Retreat 03/08/06

2006 Mar 8 Wed: Lenten Weekday/ John of God, rf

Jon 3: 1-10/ Ps 50(51): 3-4. 12-13. 18-19/ Lk 11: 29-32

From today’s readings: "Jonah began his journey through the city, and had gone but a single day’s walk announcing, ‘Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,’ when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.... A heart contrite and humbled, O God, You will not spurn.... This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah."

Jonah and Jesus

Despite his initial reluctance to go and prophesy in Nineveh, Jonah had unmatched success in completing his mission - the king and the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and committed themselves to doing penance. This was all the more remarkable because Nineveh was a pagan and evil city, and Jonah himself was not the most zealous of prophets, nor was his own life the most elegant example of personal holiness.

Why couldn’t Jesus, the most zealous and holy of all, match Jonah’s success? There are always three factors involved in conversion: God’s grace, past and immediate circumstances, and the person’s free response. Grace is never lacking, but also is never forcefully imposed. Circumstances are never ultimately the decisive factor, but they certainly can either enhance or inhibit the receptivity to grace. Free will, then, is always the critical variable. Nineveh converted, in spite of the handicap of circumstances, because its citizens chose freely to embrace the grace of Jonah’s prophetic warnings. The evil generation hearing Jesus did not convert, in spite of the advantages of circumstances, because its citizens chose freely to reject the grace of Christ’s presence.

In our own day too, grace is never lacking. Admittedly, the circumstances have changed drastically - on the one hand, the culture of death markedly inhibits receptivity to grace, but, in any case, it’s debatable whether this ambience is more inhospitable than that of Nineveh; and on the other hand, the culture of life engendered by Christ’s Gospel has an ascendant vitality that reaches, in some way at least, to every person on the planet. So, free will is still the critical variable. You and I and all our contemporaries can choose to embrace God’s call to repentance, or we can ignore it, in which case, "at the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here."