Wednesday of the First Week in Lent
The Ninevites repented at the preaching of the stranger Jonah. The Queen of Sheba came from afar to hear the famous wisdom of King Solomon. Yet Jesus was ignored by so many people of his own community and generation. He laments, “At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here.”
Sometimes I think we can fall into the same tendency as the people of Jesus’ generation. We can be deaf to the call to conversion and repentance. The people of Jesus’ generation might have thought, “I’m fine. I’m a child of Abraham. I have nothing to worry about.” We can read about them in hindsight and think that they were foolish in their complacency, all while failing to reflect on our own deafness.
The fact is that it is often far easier to examine another person’s conscience than to examine our own. Speaking for myself, I am probably at my most judgmental and irritable precisely when I am falling deeper into sin. In such moments, I am missing the Sign of Jonah that God has given to me. I am missing the call to conversion in my own life.
It would be a foolish thing to be blind to the sins of others; but it is a far more dangerous thing to be blind to our own sins. When we sense that wave of judgment and irritability, let that be a warning to us to examine our own conscience first.