Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week, we’ll be reading
through the book of the Prophet Jonah.
The Lord gave Jonah a daunting task: go to Nineveh and
preach God’s judgment upon the wicked Ninevites. Nineveh was the capital of the
Assyrian empire, which had brutally and tyrannically held the civilized world
in terror for three hundred years.
Jonah had no great love for the Ninevites. They were wicked, they were the enemy. Jonah
likely felt that the Ninevites could use a healthy dose of God’s wrath. They were a threat to the very existence of
the Jews. If they repented, that would
put his own nation at risk. So when told
to go to Ninevah, Jonah fled in the opposite direction. He did not want God to show Ninevah any
mercy.
In the Gospel, Jesus challenges the prevailing attitude
about mercy, the attitude that you only show mercy to your own kind, your own
people, your neighbor. The story of the
good Samaritan urges us to show mercy, not just to our own people, but to all:
those of different of different races, those with different backgrounds, those
of other faiths, those who are perhaps, repugnant to us. That is to be the mark of the Christian: we
are to show mercy toward all.
We are just two months away from the beginning of the year
of Mercy, called for by Pope Francis. In
the Papal Bull, Misericordiae Vultus, announcing the year of Mercy, Pope
Francis writes, “mercy is not only an action of the Father, it becomes a
criterion for ascertaining who his true children are. In short, we are called
to show mercy because mercy has first been shown to us. Pardoning offences
becomes the clearest expression of merciful love, and for us Christians it is
an imperative from which we cannot excuse ourselves. At times how hard it seems
to forgive! And yet pardon is the instrument placed into our fragile hands to
attain serenity of heart. To let go of anger, wrath, violence, and revenge are
necessary conditions to living joyfully.”
Look at all the trouble Jonah caused for resisting God’s
call to extend mercy: running away from mercy, caused a violent storm which
nearly caused a shipwreck; Jonah was thrown into the dark sea from which only
divine intervention could save him.
We do well to consider how we will engage in works of mercy
in the coming year. How will I and my
family feed the hungry, clothe the naked, counsel the doubtful, visit the
imprisoned, pray for the living and the dead, bear wrongs patiently? Who might
be the people that God is calling me to forgive or to extend mercy towards in a
deeper way?
In this Holy Year, the Holy Father writes, we are to “look
forward to the experience of opening our hearts to those living on the
outermost fringes of society.” “May we never
tire of extending mercy, and be ever patient in offering compassion and comfort”
for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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