27th Week, Ordinary Time, Tuesday, Oct 5
Jonah 3:1-10 / Luke 10:38-42
God calls Jonah again: This time Jonah obeyed.
A Peanuts cartoon shows Charlie Brown in a dejected state. He is depressed because he failed to come to the rescue of his sister when the playground bully was taunting her. Linus tries to cheer Charlie up, saying, “You know what you would do, if you had it happen all over again.” Charlie says, “Yeah, I’d probably do the same thing.” Many of us feel the same way about certain things. We think change is impossible.
Today’s reading, however, suggests otherwise. God is a persistent lover. His mercy is infinitely more generous and his grace is infinitely more powerful than our sinfulness.
*****
How convinced are we that we can change if we just keep trusting and trying? “Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.” Christopher Morley
***
In Jonah’s experience, God’s word is very powerful if we bring it to people in the name of God and if they are open to it.
***
It's one thing to know that we have a bad habit, or an addiction, but yet it is another thing to kick it out or to change our habits. One simple example is watching TV. We can get into the habit of just sitting in front of the TV and let time fly, and slowly it becomes an addiction. And short of throwing away the TV, we might find it real difficult to kick this bad habit or the addiction of wasting time and watching rubbish. So, what is the key to change, to conversion, to repentance? Relying simply on will-power might be out of the question, because we know how often will-power has failed us when it comes to an addiction. yet the key is also in the will-power. The will-power must be empowered by the truth; only then can the will-power respond to the call for conversion and repentance. The people of Nineveh repented because they heard the truth from Jonah, and they responded.
That is also what Jesus is highlighting in today's gospel. The one thing needed and which is necessary is to listen - to listen to the truth and to be open to it. Listening to the truth and being open to it is what is needed if we are to respond to God's call to conversion and repentance. May our hearts be opened to that truth.
***
A hospitable family or person makes guests feel at home and gives them the best available. But if we are truly hospitable, we are also listening to the guest and to receive from him or her perhaps more than we give and in a deeper way. We receive the guest as a person. God presents himself in the Bible as a traveller on a journey. He asks for hospitality as a stranger or a poor person. Christ also says that in the homeless we welcome him.
***
Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem and his passion, when he dropped in at Mary and Martha's. He needed some rest and comfort. Mary understood this better. He also understood that there was a clash of temperaments. Mary may have been better but Martha was good. Better is not the opposite of good. Some take this story to mean that there are two ways of those who give their life for Christ. The contemplative and the active. They read too much into the story. Jesus was not just a contemplative. Hours of prayer and meditation are the best preparation for our activity. To cut these hours for work is apt to make work empty, meaningless, outward activity. The teacher or the preacher who comes from the presence of God to the presence of men gives knowledge and light. For him, contemplation was the source of all activity. His preaching and teaching, even his whole life had its origin there. He was a contemplative in action.
***
Prayer: Our loving God and Father, you have invited us to stay with you, to listen to the message of Jesus your Son and to accept from him your peace and love. May we welcome him wholeheartedly and learn from him to welcome him too in people who appeal to us for forgiveness and a bit of warmth, for patience and hope and joy. Let them not pass your servants by. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen
