Tag Archives: Jonah

Church Leaders

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Peter the Apostle, Cloisters, New York

Keep Peter and the rest of the apostles in mind when thinking about church leaders. In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles  Peter finds himself called from Joppa to bring the gospel to a Roman centurion, Cornelius, and his household. Joppa, remember, was the seaport where Jonah began his perilous journey to Nineveh and the gentile world.

In Joppa, the tired apostle asleep on the roof of Simon the Tanner’s house overlooking the vast sea has a disturbing vision. Instead of the usual  kosher food  a gentile banquet is poured out before him; as a good Jew Peter pushes it away. Three times the vision invites the puzzled apostle to eat.

Then, messengers appear at the door from Cornelius, a gentile soldier stationed in Caesaria Maritima, Rome’s headquarters just up the coast, asking Peter to come and speak about “the things that had happened.” He’s invited to the gentile banquet he saw in his dream.

“As I began to speak,” Peter says describing their meeting, ” the Holy Spirit fell upon them as it had upon us at the beginning.” It was a gentile Pentecost. Peter baptized the Roman soldier, his friends and his household. “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but every nation is acceptable to him,” 

Did Peter know then where his visit to Cornelius would lead? Was the simple fisherman, who spoke Aramaic with a Galilean accent, who felt the pull of home, family and fishing boats, ever comfortable in a gentile world? Later, he traveled to Antioch in Syria and then to Rome, where he was killed in the Neronian persecution in the 60’s. Was he ever completely comfortable at a gentile meal and a gentile world?

Artists usually portray Peter in Rome as a church leader firmly in charge of the church, holding its keys tightly in hand. Clearly, he is a rock.

I saw another image of Peter years ago in the Cloisters Museum in New York. He’s softer, reflective, more experienced, not completely sure of himself. There’s a consciousness of failure in his face. He seems to be listening humbly for the voice of the Shepherd, hoping to hear it and ever surprised by the unexpected coming of the Holy Spirit.

Church leaders never fully understand the mysterious ship they’re called to steer. They have to listen for the Shepherd’s voice and look for signs of the Spirit.

Wednesday, 1st Week of Lent: The Sign of Jonah

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Jonah, Roman Catacombs


Luke 11:29-32

Jonah, starting out, doesn’t seem like much of a prophet, does he? He’s a frightened man fleeing the task God gives him–to preach repentance to the great city of Nineveh. He thinks it can’t be done. Not only does he think himself unable to preach repentance to that city but, as we see later in the story, he doesn’t think they deserve to be forgiven. He has a low estimation of God’s forgiveness.

He can’t stop the sailors who thought he cursed their ship from throwing him overboard. He would have been finished if the whale that swallowed him didn’t vomit him onto the shore at Nineveh.The people of Nineveh listened to Jonah and begged God for forgiveness. God calls Jonah to be his messenger of forgiveness.

In Jesus, a greater than Jonah calls us to take up his mission. Jesus announced his death and then rose from the belly of the earth. That’s his great word, his message of hope — God’s forgiveness. That message must be proclaimed to the whole world and the world must hear it.

Paintings and sculptures of the story of Jonah, like the above, often appear in the early Christian catacombs of Rome. There’s Jonah thrown to the whale. On the upper right panel, Moses strikes the rock and water flows, a sign of Baptism promising life. (Note the water flows over the whale) On the panel upper left, Jesus raises Lazarus from the grave.

The story of Jonah raises our hope and nourishes our prayers. God offers us a great mission and a great vision. As it was with Jonah, we may find it beyond our understanding and think our world unredeemable, but we are called to believe in the great mercy of God. but we are called to believe.

“Have mercy on me, O God, in your kindness” we pray in Psalm 51, our responsorial psalm today. Is that the prayer of one person, or is it the prayer of the whole world, yearning for forgiveness, like the people of Nineveh?

Lord,
I believe in the sign
that lifted you up and blesses us,
the sign of your Cross.
You bring resurrection and life to the world,.
Help us believe in what is beyond anything we know..
Amen.

The Sign of Jonah

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The three readings in our lectionary these last days from the Book of Jonah reveal a man who seems unchanged by the amazing things that happened to him. At first Jonah refuses God’s command to call the great city of Nineveh to repentance. He sees no sense to it. Then, thrown overboard by sailors, he’s swallowed up by a whale that deposits him on the beach at Nineveh. 

He finally preaches in the great city and it repents. But here at the end, Jonah’s angry. He doesn’t seem to appreciate what God has done. He’s still a very small-minded, unchanged man, it seems. 

Jesus uses the story of Jonah in the gospel as a sign of the power of the resurrection. The resurrection is God’s power at work. It’s not human power, God’s power is at work. God raises Jesus from the dead, but God also raises up people like Jonah, who don’t altogether grasp God’s plan, they’re not perfect, they’re weak even till the end. 

Pictures of the story of Jonah are common in the Christian catacombs in early Rome, where they’re found over the remains of someone deceased. The whole story is usually there, from Jonah getting thrown off the boat, to being swallowed up by the whale, to Jonah sitting in the shade of the vine.(see above)

The early Christians recognized the wisdom in the stories of the Jewish scriptures much more than we do today, so you wonder if they saw themselves and their loved ones who passed on in the Jonah story. 

Most of the people in the catacombs were ordinary Christians, not all heroic saints. They were conscious of their weak faith as citizens of this great city, but they also recognized the power of Jesus Christ who, in his resurrection, brought life even to those of little faith.

Jonah was their patron saint. 

You Want a Sign

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    In this Wednesday’s Gospel (Lk 11: 29-32) our Lord says :

    ” This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.”

    Our Lord seems so frustrated and annoyed with the people of His time ( and I’m sure with us too!) . Like them we want easy fixes to so many sufferings, complications, and problems that plague our personal lives and our society. ” God, please manifest Your great power and heal our world!”

    Our Lord seems to imply that the solutions begin with our changes of heart, where, like the people of Nineveh, we listen to God’s word, repent, and become servants of God’s will which is always our welfare and happiness.

    But we want a ” great sign” to startle us out of our stupor. Our Lord seems to say that His own death and resurrection is that sign.

    Only 2 weeks ago we remembered the anniversary of the passing of my wonderful friend, Fr Owen Lally,CP, the leader of our prayer group. His spirit still lives in us. Our group still stands strong. Through Fr Owen’s guidance we always strove to be ” the sign of Jonah”. Fr Owen wrote:

    ” Our Resurrection with the Lord is the sign of Jonah. Our old self transformed by grace into our true self IS our resurrection. Our entire life’s journey has as it’s goal the renewal of the old man of sin into the new man of grace in Christ. Individually this is wonderful to see, but to bring several brothers and sisters into unity is the true icon of the risen Lord.

    Mutual Indwelling is the result of becoming human together. The sign of Jonah was the survival of our Lord’s being in the belly of the earth. We are in the belly of the whale by our baptism and deep immersion into the water. Whoever is in Christ is a new creation. ‘ Whenever two or three are gathered together in my name I am there.’ ‘ This is the Sign by which all shall know that I have come forth from God, that you love one another.’ The primary way to make new Christians and to get vocations is to love one another and become one in community.”

    The Passionist Community has graciously allowed our Prayer Group (Fr Owen’s Prayer Group) to meet on Sundays, after mass, at the Passionist Monastery in Jamaica, NY. Sometimes when I walk into that Monastery Chapel in the middle of our prayer meeting, I am struck by the awesome power of 30 to 40 people, who have given themselves fully to song and praise, to love and support for one another.  In this place the Spirit of the Risen Jesus is alive in all His Glory, a sign to the world that Love is supreme, that there is hope, that our Lord reigns!  In a way we feel like God’s prophets. We are compelled to walk through our own Nineveh and proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom!

Orlando M. Hernández

Jonah

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God sent Jonah to the “enormously big city” of Nineveh. Three days to go through it. No wonder poor Jonah headed off in the opposite direction, seeking smallness, safe and sound. But God doesn’t call us to smallness. “You kingdom come” we pray; let’s work for it.

In this holy time,

a time of grace, Lord,

awaken kingdom dreams in us,

save us from dreaming too small.

You came to Jonah a second time,

Come

send us into Nineveh

as your presence there.

For a homily.