A Small and Stubborn Heart: The Story of Jonah
Jonah prophesied some time before 732 BC. Other biblical and apocryphal books (2 Kings, Tobit, and 3 Maccabees), Jesus, and Josephus, a Jewish historian of the First Century, all understood Jonah to be a historical person relating actual
events.
Jesus said,
"For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale,
so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth" (Mt 12:40). People tend to assume that Jonah was alive during the three
days leading some to scoff and claim the book is fictional (although there is
an 1896 incident where a person did survive being inside a sperm whale).
However, Jonah's prayer in chapter 2 says that he descended to Sheol, the Pit,
which are OT terms for the place of the dead. So perhaps we are to understand
Jonah as dying inside the fish and upon being expelled, was resuscitated. This
fits both with Jonah's descent to Sheol, the Pit, and with Jesus' prophecy, by analogy,
of his own death, burial, and resurrection.
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church is located in California City, CA. Visit our website at ollcalcity.org.
The Biblical book
of Jonah tells us the prophet Jonah's message (destruction of Nineveh if the
people did not repent), but also tells us of Jonah's smallness of heart.
Another theme
of the book of Jonah has to do with the striking contrast between Jonah, an
Israelite, and the Gentiles. Jonah is called by God to be a prophet but
intentionally defies God's express will for his life, running away to sea. But
the Gentile sailors actively seek to find out the will of God, pray, attempt to
row Jonah to shore, can't, and only reluctantly toss him overboard as he had asked;
then they offer sacrifice to the God of Israel in gratitude for their
salvation. The Gentile people of Nineveh also respond by a mass repentance the
like of which was scarcely ever seen in Israel itself, throwing themselves on
the mercy of the Lord God of Israel. But Jonah becomes enraged with God for
sparing the people.
Last month Pope
Francis gave a homily on Jonah and said, "Jonah is angry at the Lord
because He is too merciful and because He does the opposite of what He
threatened to do. Jonah says to the Lord that it is better to die than to
continue this work as a prophet of God…."
The Pope said that
"the heated exchange" between the Lord and Jonah "is between two
hardheads. Jonah is stubborn with his convictions of faith [i.e., what he
thought was supposed to happen]; the Lord is stubborn in his mercy."
"Jonah
was stubborn because he put conditions on his faith. … [He] is the model of
those Christians who always put conditions saying, 'I am a Christian on
condition that things are done this way.'" But these kinds of conditions,
the Pope said, lock up many Christians in their own ideas, putting them against
the path of faith, afraid to place themselves in the hands of God. They prefer
to judge everything from the “smallness of their hearts.”
So Jonah can
teach us to grow in surrendering our own ideas and expectations in order to
throw ourselves on God's mercy, and to trust Him – especially when we don't
understand – precisely because God is always good and merciful.
Dibby Green
Originally published in the print edition of the Mojave Desert News on October 31, 2019.Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church is located in California City, CA. Visit our website at ollcalcity.org.