Date21/02/2024
Wednesday of the First Week in Lent
Reading of the day
A reading from the Book of Jonah
Jon 3:1-10
The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:
"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 the news reached the king of Nineveh,
he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe,
covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes.
Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh,
by decree of the king and his nobles:
"Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep,
shall taste anything;
they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water.
Man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God;
every man shall turn from his evil way
and from the violence he has in hand.
Who knows, God may relent and forgive, and withhold his blazing wrath,
so that we shall not perish."
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.
Gospel of the day
From the Gospel according to Luke
Lk 11:29-32
While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them,
“This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,
so will the Son of Man be to this generation.
At the judgment
the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation
and she will condemn them,
because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
and there is something greater than Solomon here.
At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
and condemn it,
because at the preaching of Jonah they repented,
and there is something greater than Jonah here.”
Words of the Holy Father
The doctors of the law did not understand the signs of the times and invoked an extraordinary sign.And he proposed several answers: the first was “because they were closed. They were closed within their system, they had organized the law very well”. It was “a masterpiece. (…) It was all organized”. They did not understand that God is always new; (…) He always surprises. And they did not understand and they closed themselves within that system created with much good will; and they asked” that Jesus give them “a sign”, failing to understand, however, “the many signs that Jesus made” and maintaining a completely “closed” attitude.Second they had forgotten that they were a people on a journey. And when one is on a journey one always finds new things, things one does not know. And this must make us think: “Am I attached to my things, to my ideas, closed? Or am I open to the God of surprises?”. And also: “Am I a stationary person or a person on a journey?”. And finally, “do I believe in Jesus Christ and in what he has done?”, that is, “he died, rose again... do I believe that the journey goes forth toward maturity, toward the manifestation of the glory of the Lord? Am I capable of understanding the signs of the times and of being faithful to the voice of the Lord that is manifest in them?”.We can ask ourselves these questions today and ask the Lord for,“A heart that loves the law, for the law is God’s”, but “which also loves God’s surprises”, for his “holy law is not an end in itself”. (Santa Marta, 13 Oct 2014)
- Excerpts from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. Used with permission. All rights reserved. No portion of this text may be reproduced by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
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