Jonah our predecessor. Homily at the Mass
Manila Retreat 3
Mass. St. Matthew. The Experience of Jonah (Jonah 3-4; Mt 9:9-13)
For the beginning of our retreat I chose the prophet Jonah as a
symbol because in his book we find on one side the prophet, the
chosen one of God who carries on successfully his mission in spite of
all his human frailties and shortcomings which accompany him from
beginning to the end; on the other side we have Nineveh, a city of
great sinners, one who deserves the same fate of Sodom and Gomorrah
but who is saved because she listens to the message of the unwilling
prophet.
Jonah has a vocation, a mission to accomplish, but prefers to follow
his desire for simple, quiet life. God is insistent, he escapes, he
does not want to change. His stubbornness causes a disaster for those
who are with him, until he admits his faults. He goes through a
period of purification (in the belly of the whale which represents
the death of Christ), then he can start his apostolate. He does well
but his human side is still strong. He feels now jealous; he is upset
and cannot accept that God is merciful with others.
Jonah is a representation of humanity (he wants to run away from his
responsibility), causer of destructions (storm), accepts the mission
and pulls on himself the blame and asks to be thrown into the sea to
save the others (death of Christ) and stays for three days in the
belly of the fish (Jesus in the tomb). He becomes a real messenger
of mercy, yet he remains proud and selfish (He wants to see the
punishment of Niniveh).
Jonah is a paradigm of our life. We get up early morning, we go for
prayer and offer everything to the Lord, then we start working,
hoping that there will be no problems, we meet the needs, get angry
at them, find solutions often not understood by those around us. We
come back in the evening exhausted and find the house empty, not
empty of people, but empty of feelings, we would like that people ask
us how was our day but nobody does it, they come and put only extra
burden on us. We are tired and yet there are so many things to be
done like prayer and meetings. Superiors ask us for new
responsibilities and we feel unable to cope, we do not see reasons
for changing for doing something new. Now we remember that this
morning I had promised to do everything for him, but during the day
he was the absent one, we didn’t see him, feel him, the burden was
on us only and after all the good results achieved were so because of
our hard work. One day we get sick, old, we cannot work anymore and
we ask ourselves: what now? The one who comes after me is undoing all
my work because he has completely different ideas, a different way of
doing things and that burns inside of us as if the years we have been
there working had been wrong or useless.
This makes us reflect on two points: first of all our vocation.
Vocation does not always go along with what we like, we feel, we
want. Of course we are basically happy of being priests, religious,
missionaries, but there are so many aspects of this life we would
happily do without, and so we easily get into compromises: this I do,
this no. We are the called, not the caller, so we cannot dictate
rules or conditions. And we are called for a purpose, which is an
important one. God has great plans for us.
Second point is our humanity. It is the starting point of reflection
for the General chapter. It is also a very important topic in every
meditation Pope Francis made on life of the religious, priests and
bishops. According to him most of the problems in today's Church and
even society is what he calls “self-referenciality” or putting
the self at the centre of our concern, and the only solution for the
problems is the fellowship of Christ picking up our Cross.
If Jonah would have applied to join our seminaries, we would have
dismissed him for lack of courage, lack of initiative.
But the most shocking aspect is the fact that he doesn’t feel any
pity for the people of Niniveh. Instead of being happy that his
mission has been successful he feels upset because he hasn’t seen
the punishment from the Lord. He may call it righteousness. He has
done all that travelling and work and everything ends in a show of
weakness, of foolishness. In Jonah’s heart there is no space for
mercy because there is no real love for his vocation. He is attached
to his duty but not to God. The Gospel presents us the call of Levi,
e tax collector, a sinner who was looked at by the Lord with mercy
and became an apostle. The sentence used to describe his call has
become the motto of Pope Francis.
During these 5 days of retreat we will see the different areas that
make up our religious life and vocation; we will not ask ourselves if
we do our job well, but if we are truthful to our call, if we are
servants of God or of some human calculation.