Can We Learn From The Example Of The Ninevites?

3B

RUTH FROM OMAHA SAID: AT A RECENT WEDDING I attended, the groom and groomsmen stood at the altar in eager anticipation of the bride's arrival. My three-year-old niece, sitting next to me, was also filled with anticipation. Pointing to the men, she shouted, “I wonder which one she'll pick?”

(Reader's Digest)

The theme in our Readings this Sunday is that everything in our lives is called to be relative to the Christ-event.

1). Like in marriage, and in weeping, rejoicing, buying, “From now on, let those having wives act as not having them,” our Second Reading says.

The meaning is that Christians should live in this world as it has been transformed by the death and resurrection of Jesus so as not to be ruled and dominated by the deceptive demands of this world. All our concerns in this life are relative to God.

Of course, it’s not wrong to have a family, to be in business, to rejoice or weep. The Church teaches that we can serve the Lord and grow in holiness through any honest task, whether we are single or married.

We do these for the Lord, we inwardly detach from them. Our daily activity is placed on the altar, offered up to God as a gift.

2). Time must be relative to God-

St. Paul, in our Second Reading, says: “the time is running out.”

Jonah to Nineveh, in our First Reading: Forty-days more and Nineveh will be destroyed.

The calling of the first Apostles: They dropped everything immediately and followed him.

The word for “time” is not chronos, as in hours and days, but Kairos, “critical time.”

Kairos time does not tell us what time it is, but what time is for.

Our time here is to serve the Lord in the aiding of the oppressed, lonely, forgotten, and to love God.

Jesus promises his followers a more advanced kind of fishing for the benefit of the salvation of others.

3). Our conduct is called be relative to God.

Can we learn from the example of the Ninevites?

Can we turn our lives around when we get warnings?

We get implicit and explicit warnings: from our own bodies warning us of problems and from our doctors warning us about unhealthy habits.

In relationships we also get implicit and explicit warnings.

In Jonah the prophetic message is short (one simple sentence, only five Hebrew words). "Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed. "

They were ready to turn to God.

verbum sat sapienti, a word is enough for a wise man.

The word sent is from Yahweh, in a genuinely prophetic message, and is received “ecstatically.”

Public fasting. Sackcloth. Turning from evil ways.

Repentance means metanoia, to turn around.

It’s not regressive, but a progressive state. It connotes a new beginning in moral conduct.

Amen.