Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
An evil generation seeks a sign, and will be given none but that of Jonah.
Why?
The first thing an evil people must do if God is to be of any help is repent, and that was the message of Jonah. Not just repentance, but to do so to avoid their own destruction! We know that the king and his entire city repented in sackcloth and ashes; they listened to the strange prophet from a strange land. Yet the Son of God comes to His own people, and they will not listen. The foreign queen came from great distance just to glean wisdom from Solomon, the son of David; the Son of David who will reign forever shares His wisdom, and they reject Him. At the end of all things that queen, the people of Nineveh, and countless others will testify against those who rejected Jesus, saying, “We listened to those God sent; YOU had the benefit of listening to His own Son, and you would not listen! You have condemned yourselves.”
And so the day would come when the Son of David, the new “Jonah” would be swallowed up not by a whale, but by Death, and lie three days not in the depths of the sea but in the earth, and He would not be spat out by Hell, but rather by His own might He would break down its gates and rise. Some, then, seeing the sign, would repent, and yet we know the frustrating truth that many yet doubted.
Where do we find ourselves? Do we join the queen of the south and the people of Nineveh, or do we belong to the “evil generation” who wants proof, wants signs, wants to be convinced before we will believe? Where in our relationship with Jesus do we yet hesitate to trust, to believe?