CONTEMPLATION
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily for this First Wednesday of Lent is,
“The Sign of Jonah - Contemplation.”
Since both readings for today talk about Jonah, I better
talk about Jonah. But to be more specific, I would like to talk about the sign of Jonah. One of the ongoing
scripture questions is: Just what was the sign of Jonah? [Cf. Jonah 3:1-10; Luke 11:29-32]
SIGNS
First signs.
We humans need signs: signs that we are here. Signs that we
are recognized, accepted, acknowledged. We wait for texts and e-mails from
others that they are alive and all goes well. When we get medical tests, we anxiously await
the results. When we are being operated on they keep an eye on our vital signs.
When it comes to God, we look for signs that God is present
- that God is alive.
If God gave a message that God would appear in Bangkok
Thailand or Reykjavik, Iceland, next July 14th, there wouldn’t be enough hotel
space or airplanes to get the amount of people who would want to be there.
Jesus knew all this. He says in the gospel that people look
for signs, but the only sign they are going to get is himself. He is the sign
of Jonah.
At times Saint Alphonsus, the founder of us Redemptorists, talked about people running all over the
place for miracles etc., when we have Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
Alphonsus states in his Practice
of the Love of Jesus Christ, that God gives 3 great signs of his love:
creation, the cross and the Eucharist.
YET
Yet we humans miss too many signs. They are there. Yet we
aren’t looking.
The people of Nineveh got the message. They read the signs and
they changed. They repented.
So Jesus says, “I ain’t going to give you big miracles.
Change!”
EXEGESIS
Ooops, I better get to my point about what is the sign of
Jonah.
Let me give a bit of exegesis or Bible text explanations.
Exegetes looking at today’s gospel, say that the sign of
Jonah is Jonah spending 3 days in belly of the whale. Just as Jesus spent 3
days in the belly of the earth (in a tomb), so too Jonah spent 3 days in the
belly of a whale. Just as Jonah was thrown up on the shore, so too Jesus is
thrown up again on the shore of the earth. He is born again.
Baptism is part of this story. Easter is the big time for Baptism.
Others, would say, basing their stuff on today’s gospel from
Luke, the sign of Jonah is the preaching of repentance. Exegetes always say
that people are looking for big signs, big miracles, big wonders, before they
will convert, before they will come to God, before they will come to Jesus.
They say to Jesus in so many words, “Work the miracles we heard you worked in
X, and we here in Y will change.” Alphonsus would comment that people go all
over the place and neglect Jesus in our midst, for example in the tabernacle.
So - with various opinions - on all this, we don’t know for sure what the sign of Jonah
is.
THOMAS MERTON
For the sake of a thought for a weekday Mass during Lent, I
would propose that the sign of Jonah is contemplation. Saying that is kind of
odd and jarring - hopefully.
Let me try to explain.
When preparing this homily I recalled Thomas Merton’s book, The Sign of Jonah. Maybe that would
help. I noticed that he says many things in that book, but what struck me was
his idea of contemplation.
Being in the belly of the whale - being in that quiet, being caught in that
inner room, Jonah had to think. He was stuck. He was imprisoned. He had to say,
“Where am I? What did I do to get caught here?”
Figuring that out was contemplation. Jonah became a new
person in the belly of the whale. Then he was reborn. He became a new person.
So too, we have to become quiet. That’s one of the themes of Lent.
And in his book, The
Sign of Jonah, Thomas Merton says, that in a cold, pre-spring moment he
discovered in contemplation his whole vocation.
He said he rediscovered four things:
·
God,
·
himself
·
the scriptures
·
the divine office
ASH WEDNESDAY
On one Ash Wednesday, he saw that all will turn to ashes,
whether it’s a great painting or the billboard that he was looking at while
taking a trip into Louisville,
that featured a Lucky Strike sign. Both
will turn to ashes. Seeing all that.
And then at the end of Lent, when all the buds are about to
pop, he discovered that it’s all going to be new life. He discovered Easter
again. Life not death. Buds not ashes.
CONCLUSION
So each of us, if we take and make time for contemplation,
we can see some of these things.
For example, as in Psalm 130, we can go back to our mother’s
lap or even to her womb. We can discover
in that quiet, new beginnings. We can be reborn. We can have a second spring.
We can have new life.
And like Jonah we can start again.
The call is to do what God is calling us to do - not running
the other way - which is what Jonah did at first.
