I like reading the book of Jonah. It speaks to me on so many levels. Nineveh is the opposite of Jerusalem. It's the place where "those other people" live, those who do not belong to our "club." If I change Nineveh with "the world" (or my town) and Jerusalem with "the Church" I can see why the book speaks to me - it challenges me to look at the world out there and forces me to think of new ways in which I, like Jonah, can bring the message of God's reconciliation.
The most comforting thing about the story of Jonah is that God's Love for the Ninevites was stronger than Jonah's reluctance and inability to see past his points of view. He's the most successful prophet and yet he's the most callous and capricious one. As someone who wants to live the Gospel I have to come to term with this reality: God's message must be offered to all, regardless of what I may feel about a particular group of people. If someone becomes the "object" of God's love, I have to love them with God's love, I must love them as "loved by God."
Not an easy task, I am the first to admit. But there is no way out. What matters is that I "repent and believe the Good News." I have to change my mind about those people. This is where, I think, Jonah failed - he was not able to see the Ninevites for who they really were, God's children. Jonah let his feelings and ideas get in the way.
The Gospel offers us another way. We are learning from Jesus that we are to Love Everybody. Then, we must be The First To Love. Now, Jesus is teaching something new: when we go out there and open ourselves to others in love, and be the first one to initiate love, we must go and "share people's joys and hurts." In other words, when I encounter another person, I want to live what they are living, understand their points of view, feel what they are feeling - both joys and sorrows.
If Jesus prayed that "All May be one as we are one so that the world may believe" (jn 17:21) then today I want to love the other by "making myself one" with him or her. Jesus did the same with me: He left heaven and became human. He made himself one with me in all things but sin. He felt what I feel. He did this because He loved me. When someone talks to me, I do not want to think of anything else but I want to focus on what they are saying. If they are sharing with me a painful situation, then I want to open myself to the point of feeling that sorrow myself, so that the other may know that he is not carrying it alone.
Loving in this way will generate love in the other. Love is the most powerful way in which God leads us closer to Him. Then, I want to love as Jesus did - making myself one with all those people I encounter today. It's "supernatural" empathy.
Like Jonah, I want to go into the new "Nineveh" and proclaim that God loves them, and that He is inviting us to make different choices, choices that will not destroy us. Unlike Jonah, however, I want to go there and not be indifferent to people's pains, hardship, etc. I want to share with them their joys and sorrows. I want to make myself "one" with them because that's what Jesus did. Loving this way will make the message of the Gospel more credible.
This is going to be, perhaps, the hardest of my lenten sacrifices. It's easier to give up chocolate or pizza; it's harder to love as Jesus did. Yet, I know that only this kind of love will really allow me to encounter the Risen One already living in our midst.
This is going to be a great day!!!!!!!
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