1st Week of Lent - Wednesday - Heed the call to repentance

Our Lenten readings urge us each year to consider the story of Jonah. Jonah, a Jewish prophet, and a reluctant one, was sent by God to preach to a pagan people, to a people who did not know the God of Israel, and certainly didn’t follow his ways. Nineveh was the capital city, in fact, of Israel’s great enemy at the time, the Assyrians. Nineveh is described as enormous, taking three days to walk across, and thoroughly evil. Nineveh is symbolic of every city of the earth, whose inhabitants are far from God.

God certainly sends his modern day prophets, Christians, us, to preach to the pagan cities of the earth. And yet, the point of the story during Lent is for us to identify not so much with Jonah, but with the Ninevites, who surprisingly, respond wholeheartedly to the call of repentance.

Hearing the Word of God, the 120,000 residents of Nineveh, everyone from the nobility to the peasantry, even the cattle and sheep—expressed their repentance by fasting, covering themselves with sackcloth, and sitting in ashes. God saw by their actions, how their repentance was genuine.

Now consider in the Gospel today, how the Lord Jesus condemns those of his generation for failing to repent. Jonah preached the Word of God and the Ninevites repented, now Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, preached, and his generation fails to repent. The Lord himself explains the eternal judgment for those who fail to repent.

Lent presents us with a stark option: will we associate with the Ninevites, who repent and show their repentance by their holy works and actions? Or will we be condemned by Jesus for failing to repent?

Next week, Wednesday evening, every parish in the diocese will have confessions from 5 to 8pm. If there is anyone in your life who has fallen away from the Church, be Jonah for them, call them to repentance. Your invitation might be the prophetic gesture which leads them back to God. And be a Ninevite for them, show them the power of repentance, the joy that comes from encountering God’s mercy, of returning to Him with your whole heart, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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That the season of Lent may bring the most hardened hearts to repentance and bring to all people purification of sin and selfishness.

For those preparing for baptism and the Easter sacraments, that they may continue to conform themselves to Christ through fervent prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

That we may generously respond to all those in need: the sick, the suffering, the homeless, the imprisoned, and victims of violence. And for all victims of the coronavirus and their families.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

Grant, we pray, O Lord, that your people may turn to you with all their heart, so that whatever they dare to ask in fitting prayer they may receive by your mercy. Through Christ our Lord.