Homily: 1st week of Ordinary time - Wednesday - Call to repentance

The Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent take on a more penitential tone.  And our readings are literally about people repenting and the Lord praising their repentance. 

The third chapter of Jonah contains one  of the most dramatic responses to the call to repentance in the entire old covenant—the entire a city of Nineveh—about 120,000 people—everyone, the nobility, the peasantry, even the cattle and sheep—all repented when God sent Jonah to preach to them. 

When the Ninevites repented, they expressed their repentance by fasting, covering themselves with sackcloth, and sitting in ashes. But better yet, they had the best sort of repentance, as they indicated their sorrow "by their actions how they turned from their evil way".

During lent we undertake the external practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to show our repentance, as signs of repentance, and to bring about that entire conversion which will have an effect on our behavior, attitudes, and choices. 

In the Gospel, Jesus says, this generation is an evil generation.  Why?  Because it was so resistant to repentance.  It didn’t want conversion, it didn’t want to be open to God’s message as the Ninevites were, it wanted signs, it wanted a magic show, it wanted to be entertained.  Sounds familiar. 

The people of Nineveh, wicked as they were, made the connection between their sins and impending destruction. These people frequently brutalized and butchered large numbers of people. They were pagans, spiritually dead, the least likely to repent. Yet the prophetic word pierced their hearts, and they repented en masse. Jesus commended their repentance.

When people are in sin, telling them to repent is not unkind or cruel. It is an act of love, because only in this way can they correct their lives and receive eternal life.

For weeks the diocese of Cleveland has been hosting television commercials to advertise that every parish in the diocese will have confessions this evening from 5 to 8pm.  If there is anyone in your life who has fallen away from the Church, please invite them to confession tonight, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.