Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary time
(Jonah 1:1-2:2.11; Luke 10:25-37)
It can be said that the Bible is ambivalent about
religious pluralism. Last week the Old
Testament readings at mass chastised Israel for cavorting with foreigners. Today the reading features God’s calling
Jonah to preach repentance in Nineveh, Israel’s fiercest enemies. Likewise, today’s gospel exalts a grace-filled,
non-Jewish Samaritan.
Jonah has evidently developed a bias against
Assyria. He quite deliberately boards a
ship heading away from the country.
Likely depressed by his sin, Jonah sleeps through a violent storm. When awaken, he is asked by the pagan sailors
to pray to God for deliverance. These
same barbarians question the morality of Jonah’s recommendation that they throw
him overboard.
There are good people everywhere. It can even be said that most people are
good. We should not make rash statements
condemning the people of Russia, Afghanistan, or North Korea. It is also true that evil lurks over us so
that good people may commit egregious offenses.
Ours is to repent of sin both personal and social. At the same time we pray that the faults of
other individuals and nations be forgiven and corrected.
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