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Dear Father Angelo

Good morning. I came across your site, I didn’t know it. Would you kindly publish on the site the explanation of the meaning of the Book of Jonah and its trials? Faith under trial.

Thank you.

Benedetto

Priest’s answer

Dear Benedetto,

1. The book of Jonah tells of the mission that God had given him for the salvation of a pagan city, Nineveh.

He had told him to go to that city and announce: “forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown”.

Nineveh was a pagan city and Jonah’s story indicates that God wants all men to be saved, even non-Christians.

And just as he does not cease to give signs of his love to everyone, “for he gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filled you with nourishment and gladness for your hearts” (Acts 14:17), so he does not cease to give signs to call for repentance.

He does this with everyone, with the unbaptized and with the baptized, and also with those who have distanced themselves from the Father’s house.

2. You can draw a second lesson from the words Jonah used to call for conversion: “Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

This is a severe, yet salutary warning. If Jonah had gone to tell the people of Nineveh that the delights of God’s love are much deeper and more lasting than the pleasures of the senses, the inhabitants of that city would probably have told him that they were content with the pleasures of the senses and that they were leaving the delights of God’s love to others.

God instead made it clear that the city would be destroyed if the people did not convert.

The people believed so much that we read: “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.” (Jonah 3:7-10).

3. We would say that God shook those people with servile fear, that is, with the fear of punishment. That fear was healthy because it disposed them to repentance.

Here it should be remembered that even the servile fear of God is a gift from God and disposes them to a more beautiful fear, the fear of children who repent for having saddened their parents.

For this reason the Council of Trent, referring precisely to Jonah, was able to affirm: “That imperfect contrition which is called attrition, which is commonly conceived either from the consideration of the ugliness of sin or from the fear of hell and punishment, if it excludes the will to sin with the hope of forgiveness, not only does not make man a hypocrite and a greater sinner, but it is a gift from God and an impulse of the Holy Spirit, who certainly does not yet dwell in the soul, but only moves; with the help of this impulse the penitent prepares the way of justice. And although attrition without the sacrament of Penance cannot in itself lead the sinner to justification, it nevertheless disposes him to implore the grace of God in the sacrament of Penance. In fact, the Ninevites, usefully shaken from this fear by the terrifying preaching of Jonah, did penance and implored mercy from the Lord (cf. Jonah 3)” (DS 1678). T-N

4. A third lesson concerns the person of Jonah who initially wanted to escape the will of God.

However, he could not resist this will.

A series of contrary events made him come to his senses and had the effect of the words that the risen Jesus says from heaven to Paul who is now at the gates of Damascus to persecute the Christians: “It is hard for you to kick against the goad” (Acts 26:14).

In the end Jonah accepts and decides to expose himself to the possible danger of being lynched if the people did not accept his preaching.

He was afraid to pronounce those words. He feared that they would not be welcomed and instead the Lord was already preparing the people to welcome them.

A series of events practically forces him to do the will of God.

5. A fourth lesson comes from the displeasure felt by Jonah because God had not destroyed that city full of sinners.

For Jonah, who had been waiting to see what had happened, God suddenly makes a castor-oil plant sprout and covers him with its shade. Jonah rejoices and is pleased with God because of His tenderness.

But the next day the castor-oil plant dries up and Jonah is struck by the sun under the whip of an east wind. The Ninevites are spared from death but he is not. Then Jonah “asked to die, saying, ‘It is better for me to die than to live.’”

God said to Jonah, “Have you reason to be angry over the plant?”

He answered, “I have reason to be angry”, “angry enough to die!”

But the Lord answered him, “You are concerned over the plant which cost you no labor and which you did not raise; it came up in one night and in one night it perished. And should I not be concerned over Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot distinguish their right hand from their left, not to mention the many cattle?” (Jonah 4:8-11).

6. A fifth lesson should be drawn from Jonah’s stay in the whale’s belly.

Jesus refers to this event when he says to those who ask him for a sign: “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. (Luke 11:29-30).

As Jonah, who emerged alive from the whale’s belly after three days, convinced with invitations to conversion (he certainly must have told what had happened to him) so Jesus, risen by his own virtue from the dead after being placed in the tomb, will be the most convincing sign of his divine identity and of being the redeeming Messiah.

With the hope of being persuasive like Jonah before those who do not believe, I bless you and accompany you with prayer.

Father Angelo