Saturday, January 21, 2012

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time


 The realities of the readings for our meditation for this article are focused clearly in repentance. First Jonah 3:1-5, 10 “The word of the LORD came to Jonah, saying: Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you. So Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh, according to the LORD'S bidding. 

Now Nineveh was an enormously large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began his journey through the city, and had gone but a single day's walk announcing, Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed, when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out”. And then Mark 1:14-20 After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God: "This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel."
The message in appearance is different in both but only in the exterior. Jonah is saying: "Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed," and Jesus "This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel."  These are two sides of the same coin of conversion. 
“Nineveh shall be destroyed” was and is intended to help us to think to where we are heading in our lives? Where are the personal decisions and options in life that I am taking leading me to? “The kingdom of God is at hand” is inviting us to see the alternatives we have rejected.
Jesus announces the Kingdom because our world is in crisis and cannot make it without God. God is Emanuel, God-with us, because men have demonstrated their incapacity to reach God.

REPENT! It is a plea and an order from Jesus, a plea that comes from a Heart that suffers out of love for the world. It is an order because is an act of justice; God deserves our gratitude, worship and over all Love.

Lord, I thank you for this time to be with you. I don’t deserve your close friendship, and yet you offer me the intimacy of your heart. I trust in your goodness and hope in your infinite mercy. I love you and wish to give up anything that would keep me from you.
 

Lord, give me compunction of heart and the grace of a true conversion.
Jesus, my days are booked up with so much activity and noise that it’s extremely hard for me even to reflect about my need for conversion of heart. Please help me to turn away from my sins and bad habits by turning to you and imitating you. Wash me of my sins, and draw me close to you, Amen.

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