The book of the prophet Jonah, from which our first reading
was taken, is one of my favorite books in the bible. And that’s not just because it’s only four
chapters long and can be read in one quick sitting—it’s full of drama, humor,
and insight.
Jonah has inspired painters, poets, and artists with its
strong imagery. The early Church fathers
saw Jonah in the belly of the big fish for three days as a foreshadowing of
Jesus buried in the tomb before his resurrection.
Herman Melville, the author of the greatest American epic,
Moby Dick, was also inspired by Jonah. Most
of us are somewhat familiar with this story of Captain Ahab pursuing the great
white whale.
In chapters 8 and 9, before the crew set sail on their
whaling voyage. a few crew members go to
Church in the small whaleman’s chapel of New Bedford. Father Mapple, a whaler in his own day stands
in a pulpit shaped like the stern of a ship a delivers a sermon about the
reluctant Prophet Jonah.
We heard today how Jonah set out for the great city of
Nineveh to announce to them a message of repentance. He did not want to go to Ninevah. The Ninevites were not Jews, and Jonah
believed that he would be killed for pointing out to them how they were
transgressing the commands of God. Father Mapple preached about the need to
turn away from our own self-interests in order to serve God.
Unfortunately, Captain Ahab was not attending Church that
day. Captain Ahab became bent on his
mission of revenge to hunt down Moby Dick at all costs. His obsession and hatred for the whale became
the path of his own destruction. For the
story ends with Ahab being dragged down to a watery death by the whale.
Moby Dick in a sense is a cautionary tale of what happens
when we become fixated on worldly pursuits, when we allow revenge and hatred to
rule our lives. We put our friends at
risk, Ahab put his crew members at risk, Jonah bent on escaping God’s Holy Will
led to a shipwreck.
In our Second Reading today, St. Paul urges us to recognize
that this world is transitory, it is passing away. Nothing on this earth is worth losing our
souls over: possessions, trophies and worldly fame, positions of power, moments
of earthly pleasure, all of it is passing away, so it is important for Christians
to be detached from these things, especially not to make them the center of our
lives. In the Gospel, Jesus himself says
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul? Captain Ahab settled on a
whale. Many of our contemporaries are
settling for a lot less.
In Father Mapple’s sermon to the whalers of New Bedford, he
encourages his listeners, like Jesus does in the Gospels today, to turn away
from sin. “Repent, and believe in the
Gospel” are Jesus’ first words in the Mark’s Gospel. God calls Jonah, and tells him to go to
Ninevah with a message of repentance.
Repentance is such an important first step in the spiritual
life. Every Mass begins with an act of
repentence. Lord, have Mercy, Christ,
have Mercy. Lord, Have Mercy. Our second graders, before receiving their
first holy communion, first make their first confession. To instill that repentance precedes
communion.
In just a few weeks we’ll begin again the great season of
Lent. The Church gives us this wonderful
season of repentance where enter into some serious self-examination. We examine our lives in light of the Gospel,
we look at our worldly attachments, our sinful attitudes and behaviors, and we
repent from them. We detach ourselves
from worldly pleasures by practicing fasting and abstinence. Worldly pleasures are not evil in themselves,
but they can become evil when we place them at the center of our lives, or when
we indulge in them or pursue them to
such an extent that we that we fail to serve God as we should.
When God sent Jonah into the Assyrian city of Nineveh, it
was a very odd mission, one that he initially rejected. At the time the Assyrians were the great
enemy of Israel. And God sends Jonah, a
Jew to Ninevah to tell them to repent.
This would be like a Jew, during the second world war, walking into
Germany, into Berlin, and telling Hitler that God was displeased, and if he
doesn’t Berlin would be destroyed in 40 days. It is no surprise that Jonah is
known as the reluctant prophet.
The messages and missions that God has for us are not always
easy. It was of course, not easy for
Jonah, he even ran away from God there for a while. Even when he saw that it would put his crew
at risk, it was not easy for Captain Ahab to change. And we see the results of his failure.
Sometimes we become so accustomed to our hatreds, our
grudges, as unhealthy as they are, that giving them up is hard, it feels like dying. I remember encouraging some 5th
graders to give up television and video games for Lent, one year. When I mentioned it, they let out this loud
wail…not a Moby Dick whale, but a loud groan, as if I were asking them to cut
off a limb. Giving up the attachment is
hard, but we do so, because the attachment is a cancer, that is causing
selfishness to spread to our heart.
In the spiritual life, sometimes it is our souls themselves
that are resistant to the new life God wants for us. So we cling to our whales, like Captain Ahab,
and our whales drown us. Sometimes, the
resistance comes from outside.
On one occasion, a group of priests were visiting St. John
Vianney, the parish priest of the small parish in Ars, France, where thousands
of people would come so that Fr. Vianney could hear their confession. One night the visiting priests heard these
loud crashes coming from Fr. Vianney’s room, like furniture being hurled into
the walls. They came to his bedroom door
to make sure he wasn’t being attacked by robbers. Father Vianney calmly answered the door,
asking them what they wanted. They asked
about the loud noises, and he said, the
worst assaults of the devil happened when he was on the verge of “landing a
big fish.
A big fish…a big sinner would be coming to the sacrament of
confession, and that angered the devil because he would be losing a soul that
he thought was his. Yet, this did not
phase the saintly pastor. He knew that
to endure these torments would bring about even greater grace for souls.
For many of us, bringing up religion to family members who
have left the Church results in surprisingly vicious and hostile remarks. But sometimes we are delightfully surprised to
find them ready and willing to return to the Church, they just needed an
invitation.
Jonah, preached the message to the Ninevites, and the entire
town converted, everyone from the king and his court, down to the lowly
peasants, even the livestock.
We can have hope that God is also at work, when he gives us
difficult missions.
This sort of hope led over 650 thousand people down to
Washington D.C. for the March for Life this week. Hope that God will work through their witness
to the truth. Hope that God will use
their witness to soften hearts that have been hardened to the truth of the
Gospel of Life.
May the Holy Spirit help us to be free from our sinful
detachments, that we may embrace the work God has for each of us, and know
God’s assistance what that work becomes difficult, for the Glory of God and
salvation of souls.
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