Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Scripture

Today we hear the first half of a very well known story, namely, the tale of Jonah being swallowed by the fish. We often catch that Jonah is suffering the consequences of his decision to disobey God, but we don’t always recognize the fuller context of this story. Jonah did not like the Ninevites; they were sort of enemies in some sense. Jonah had no positive feelings toward them. If Jonah could choose between the Ninevites being saved by God or condemned by God, Jonah would have chosen for them to be condemned, so little regard did he have for them. So when God asked him to go and preach to them, Jonah decided instead to run away, or rather, to sail away from Nineveh. He had no mercy to extend to the people of Nineveh, and he knew that God would extend them mercy if they repented from their evil ways. 

The gospel passage from Luke is another well known one, wherein Jesus answers the inquiries of a law scholar by ultimately telling the story of the “Good Samaritan.” Like the Ninevites of Jonah’s time, the Samaritans of Jesus’ time were not well respected. They were considered to be people who were confused about worship of God, and mistaken in their practices. This fact makes it all the more profound that the Samaritan is the one who extends mercy to the wounded man. The Samaritan knew how to be a neighbor; he knew how to extend kindness and good will toward someone in need.

The priest and the Levite in this story are great at keeping all the little details of the worship laws. And while it was important to follow these rules under normal circumstances, what they lacked was the compassion to move them beyond the laws to concern for individuals in need. The rules of our tradition are always given to us to help us grow closer to God and to grow in imitation of God, rather than to restrict us from kindness. In this particular case, the Samaritan imitated the mercy of God, even though he would not have been regarded as part of the Israelite community.

We are called to be a people of mercy because our God is a God of mercy. Despite the many sins of the Ninevites, God was prepared to forgive them. And, as we will hear in the next few days, in spite of Jonah’s disobedience, God still forgave Jonah. God forgives us, and asks us to forgive others as well. He has mercy on us and asks us to have mercy on others. In this gospel passage, Jesus tells us that we must love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. This is not a threefold command: love God, love self, love neighbor, but rather it is all bound up into one. We are most loving to ourselves when we love God and neighbor. We are most loving to our neighbor when we love God and ourselves. We are most loving to God when we imitate his own love toward ourselves and neighbors.

Today, let us recommit ourselves to living with mercy as a part of our lives. Take some time to think of how God has shown you mercy, forgiveness, and love. Then meditate on how you might need to imitate God more fully, that shine forth that same mercy, forgiveness and love, giving witness to God’s grace working in your life.

Maria Morrow