(Jonah 3:1-10; Ps 129; Lk 10:38-42)<\/p>\n
************************************************<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 the readings provide us with two very distinct messages about repentance and about prayer.<\/p>\n
The wonderful, very familiar and even entertaining story of Jonah is all about repentance \u2013 his and the Ninevites. Jonah, of course, at first resists God\u2019s call to preach to the Ninevites, and he runs in the opposite direction, only to be caught in a storm, thrown overboard, and swallowed by a whale that spits him out on the shore of the land that he was running away from.\u00a0 Today\u2019s reading picks up the story at that point with God telling Jonah, for a second time, to go and preach repentance to the Ninevites.<\/p>\n
The fact that Jesus began his preaching in the gospels with a call to repent (\u201crepent 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<\/em>, derived from meta<\/em>, or highest, and nous<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n That change begins with humble self-awareness, a willingness to change, and faith in God\u2019s 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\u2019s call, whereas the Ninevites respond to God\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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 his father was there and had heard those words he hoped would register and perhaps help his father deal with that issue. To his dismay, his father\u2019s reaction to the homily was to mention it was too bad 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, \u201cWould that we could see ourselves as others see us!\u201d<\/p>\n Virginia called me one day to complain that she just could not pray anymore. She did not feel the presence of God, was easily distracted and her prayer was dry, 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\u2019s Cursillo weekend.<\/p>\n It struck me she was not so much unable to pray, as she was ready for a more mature kind of prayer. I explained Lectio Divina<\/em> to her, an ancient form of prayer involving four stages: \u201clectio\u201d, or reading a passage of scripture; \u201cmeditatio\u201d, or meditating on that passage, asking one\u2019s self what God is saying to us through that passage; \u201coratio\u201d, an intimate conversation with God about that word as well as praying with that passage for our needs and the needs of the world, and finally the most challenging stage, \u201ccontemplatio\u201d, or contemplation, just being in the presence of God, trying not to think or feel anything, trusting that God is at work doing deep within us whatever God wants to do in our lives, healing us in some way.<\/p>\n That was all Virginia needed \u2013 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 \u2013 perhaps we are also ready for a more mature kind of prayer, saying less and listening more.<\/p>\n The Eucharist involves both these teachings. The penitential rite is a moment of profound repentance in which we receive God\u2019s 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\u2019s love.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HOMILY WEEK 27 02 \u2013 Year I Genuine Repentance and Mature Prayer: (Jonah 3:1-10; Ps 129; Lk 10:38-42) ************************************************ 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 \u2013 the readings provide us with two very distinct messages […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homilies","category-ordinary-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7723,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721\/revisions\/7723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Martha-Jesus-Mary.jpeg\")
While the first reading focuses on repentance, the gospel has a more mature prayer as its focus. Martha\u2019s problem was not that she was busy, but that she was upset and agitated in her busyness \u2013 she was not at peace and content to provide hospitality. Mary, on the other hand, was sitting at the Lord\u2019s feet in the posture of a disciple and, according to Thomas Keating, was not so much listening to Jesus\u2019 words, as she was aware 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. That she was there, in a man\u2019s place, a radical break from tradition as a woman, may also have been upsetting Martha!<\/p>\n