Homily: Monday of the 28th Week in OT - Something greater than Jonah here!

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 wanted signs, it wanted a magic show, it wanted to be entertained.  Sounds familiar!

The people of Nineveh, wicked as they were, heard the word of God preached by the prophet Jonah, and repented.  How wicked were the Ninevites?  The Ninevites frequently brutalized and butchered large numbers of people. They were pagans; they did not acknowledge the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  When a prophet of Israel came preaching to them, they were the least likely to repent.

And yet, Jonah’s prophetic word pierced their hearts, and they repented en masse.

At the preaching of Jesus there were many who failed to repent, and he was much greater than Jonah.

Saint John Paul II said that we live in a generation which has lost the sense of sin.  Pope Francis echoing the words of John Paul recently said, “When you lose the sense of sin, you also lose the “sense of the Kingdom of God.”  In the words of John Paul, when we lose the sense the sense of sin there is a failure “to acknowledge that in every man and woman there is a wound” which only God can heal. 

The failure to repent is a failure to acknowledge the need for God.

And we Christians of the 21^st century are sent by the Lord, like Jonah, into a culture which has very much lost its way—to these modern generations we don’t know who they are or where they are supposed to be going.

But when we are faithful to this prophetic task, there will be those who do respond very positively, like the Ninevites.  There are some people who would consider becoming Catholic or returning to the Sacraments if we just nudge them in the right direction.

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

May we be faithful to witnessing to the power of repentance and conversion, by first repenting of all those ways turned our own hearts away from God.  Then, filled with God’s tender mercy for sinners, may we offer a faithful prophetic witness for the glory of God and salvation of souls.