October 13: Jonah

There is a delightful little book on the prophet Jonah, by the author Paul Murray – A Journey with Jonah: The Spirituality of Bewilderment.

Might you be interested in starting your week by re-visiting The Book of Jonah in the Bible? It is amusing, only about three pages in length, adventurous, and intriguing. The introduction to it in the Jerusalem Bible calls it “one of the ‘doctrinal peaks’ of the Old Testament, broadminded, it rejects a too rigid interpretation of prophecy, and it rejects, too, a narrow racialism. All the characters of this story are likeable – the pagan sailors, the king, the populace, even the animals of Nineveh…. We are on the threshold of the Gospel.”

If you do re-visit the book, try to imagine Jesus as a young man hearing it and laughing at the bewildering antics of Jonah, the animals doing penance, and Jonah arguing heatedly with God. For example: God: “Are you right to be angry?” Jonah: “I have every right to be angry…!”

In Luke 11, 29-32, Jesus refers to Jonah. Two-thousand years after His public ministry, we are encourage by Jesus Himself to see that, in receiving Him in the Eucharist, we are coming to someone greater than Jonah. Are we inclined, though, to respond to Him by following in His way, as the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah’s call? Gifted and graced by Christ’s presence, we are challenged to live exclusively under His inspiration and example.