13 October 2025: Monday of the 28th week of Ordinary Time
Homily
The prophet Jonah was sent by God to the pagans of the city of Nineveh. But he did not want this mission, and he fled to the city of Tarshish. This, as we know, led him and all his companions into a terrible storm. In the midst of this storm, he recognised his sin and accepted – even asked – to be thrown into the sea to calm God's wrath. It was then that he began an experience of solitude, symbolised by the time he spent in the belly of a large fish, before finally beginning his mission to preach a message of repentance. However, it was impossible for him to understand that a pagan city could convert to God; and when it did convert, he was upset. As we know from the rest of the story, God will make him understand, through the image of the plant that grows in one day and dies the next, that He has the same merciful love for the pagan city of Nineveh as He has for the people of Israel.
This is what Jesus refers to when He tells the scribes and Pharisees, whom He calls a ‘perverse generation,’ that the only sign they will be given is the sign of Jonah. We should not see this simply as an allusion to the fact that Jonah's three days in the belly of the whale and his emergence from it symbolise Jesus' three days in the tomb and His resurrection. There is more to Jesus' words than that, for He also speaks to them of the conversion of the inhabitants of Nineveh and of the Queen of Sheba, who came to listen to Solomon's wisdom. Jesus' message is universalist. Salvation is for all nations.
A Father of the Church, Saint Peter Chrysologus (who was bishop of Ravenna in Italy at the beginning of the 5th century) has a very beautiful commentary on this text, in which he shows how the story of Jonah was fulfilled in Jesus. He even goes so far as to say that Jesus fled from the face of God, just like Jonah, quoting the beautiful text from Philippians 2. (He who was equal to God left His divine condition to become one of us.... The Father raised Him up, and His message spread to the ends of the earth).
We are often like the scribes and Pharisees, asking God to give us signs. We are also like Jonah, refusing to go to those of our brothers and sisters whom we consider to belong to another category, another group, another class. So God sometimes takes us and puts us through a storm—an experience of loneliness or perhaps personal failure. Let us then try to be like the Queen of Sheba, who did not hesitate to set out on her journey, leaving behind the beaten paths of our certainties – or our illusions – to listen to the wisdom of God – that wisdom which is constantly offered to us in listening to and meditating on the Word of God, but also in listening to our sisters and brothers.
We will then always return to the heart of the sign of Jonah: there is no fullness of life without passing through death. We must always die to ourselves so that Christ may be born – and be born again and again – in us.
Armand VEILLEUX