The Sign Of Jonah

October 13: Monday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Galatians 4:22-24, 26-27, 31-5:1; Psalm 113:1-2, 3-4, 5, 6-7; Luke 11:29-32

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five).

The Sign Of Jonah

“Something greater than Jonah here” (Luke 11:32).

Jesus based his credibility on the “sign” of his resurrection, previewed by Jonah’s emergence alive from the fish after three days. But the similarity ends there.

“At the preaching of Jonah the people repented.” But “there is something greater than Jonah here.” Jesus preached repentance, but only as a preliminary to believing “the good news” (Mark 1:15). The Good News is not that Jesus calls us to stop sinning and live upright lives. What is it?

It is not “the wisdom of Solomon,” or having the right answers to all doctrinal questions. There is “something greater than Solomon here” also.

Those who preach and teach a Christianity of orthodoxy and orthopraxy (worth googling) are suppressing the Good News.

The Good News is the New Life, the New Law, the new wine that Jesus gives, made visible in his rising from the dead. It became ours when we were “baptized into his death… so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3).

Jesus rose to "make all things new” (Revelation 21:5)—our goals and understanding of life; our definition of ourselves; of family, social, business and political life, and of “religion.” Those visibly renewed are “the sign of Jonah,” the Good News made visible.

PRAY: “Jesus, do this with me, in me, through me.”

PRACTICE: Say the WIT prayer (above) all day.