Genuine Repentance and Mature Prayer
(Jonah 3:1-10; Ps 129; Lk 10:38-42)
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Usually the liturgists who choose the readings for the Eucharist try to find a link or connection between the reading and the gospel. Not so today – the readings provide us with two very distinct messages about repentance and about prayer.
The wonderful, very familiar and even entertaining story of Jonah is all about repentance – his and the Ninevites. Jonah, of course, at first resists God’s call to preach to the Ninevites, and he runs in the opposite direction, only to be caught in a storm, thrown overboard, get swallowed by a whale that spits him out on the shore of the land that he was running away from. Today’s reading picks up the story at that point with God telling Jonah, for a second time, to go and preach repentance to the Ninevites.
The fact that Jesus began his preaching in the gospels with a call to repent (“repent and believe; the kingdom of God is at hand) suggests that repentance is an important first step in our journey with God. Unfortunately, the English word does not express the deeper meaning of that word which in Greek is metanoia, derived from meta, or highest, and nous, or mind. We all have a higher, noble mind filled with positive thoughts, love, honesty, humility, compassion, and other virtues. At the same time, as human beings we all have a lower mind, a kind of basement where we store painful, negative things like anger, resentment, jealousy, insecurity, stubbornness, false pride and self-pity, etc. The Holy Spirit can help us heal of those things, and transform us into greater Christ-likeness if we are willing to be humble and change.
That change begins with humble self-awareness, a willingness to change, and faith in God’s power to do what we cannot on our own power. The irony of the story is that Jonah, a believer in God, resists and runs away from God’s call, whereas the Ninevites respond to God’s call coming through Jonah, from the king on down to the animals. They repented willingly and sincerely, and serve as a good example for us to do the same.
Often, and perhaps most of the time, we need other people around us to help us become aware of what we fail to see, or resist seeing, in ourselves. It is amazing how strong our denial can be. Don, whose father was very controlling, heard a homily with his father one Sunday that precisely addressed that issue. He was delighted that his father was there and had heard those words that he hoped would register and perhaps help his father deal with that issue. To his dismay, his father’s reaction to the homily was to mention it was too bad that another acquaintance of his was not there to hear the homily. It went right over his head in what must have been selective hearing and denial. As Shakespeare put it, “Would that we could see ourselves as others see us!”
While the first reading focuses on repentance, the gospel has a more mature prayer as its focus. Martha’s problem was not that she was busy, but that she was upset and agitated in her busyness – she was not at peace and content to provide hospitality. Mary, on the other hand, was sitting at the Lord’s feet in the posture of a disciple and, according to Thomas Keating, she was not so much listening to Jesus’ words, as she was aware that she was in the presence of The Word and that was enough. She was just there, soaking up his love, a model of contemplative prayer that she invites us to imitate.
Contemplative prayer
Virginia called me one day to complain that she just could not pray anymore. She did not feel the presence of God, and was distracted too easily, and her prayer was dry and without consolation. I knew she had been to Search weekends with her teenagers, had taken a Marriage Encounter with her husband, had completed the Christopher Leadership Course, had courageously healed from a childhood experience of sexual abuse through the 12 Step program and had been Rectora for a women’s Cursillo weekend.
It struck me that she was not so much unable to pray, as she was ready for a more mature kind of prayer. I explained Lectio Divina to her, an ancient form of prayer that involves four stages: “lectio”, or reading a passage of scripture; “meditation”, or meditating on that passage, asking one’s self what God is saying to us through that passage; “oratio”, or praying with that passage for our needs and the needs of the world, and finally the most challenging stage, “contemplation”, or contemplation, just being in the presence of God, trying not to think or feel anything, just trusting that God is at work doing deep within us whatever God wants to do in our lives, healing us in some way.
That was all Virginia needed – she was off and running and content to now be relating to God in a deeper, more intimate and contemplative way. She is an example for us to imitate – perhaps we are also ready for a more mature kind of prayer, saying less and listening more.
The Eucharist involves both these teachings. The penitential rite is a moment of profound repentance in which we receive God’s forgiveness. We listen to the Word of God, receive the very Body and Blood of Jesus as a communal banquet, and then, once the hymn is finished, it is good to spend some moments in deep contemplation, simply being grateful for this wonderful gift and soaking God’s love.
So, may our celebration today deepen within us a spirit of genuine repentance, and entice us to dare to enter into a more contemplative manner of relating to our God in prayer.
