Mass Readings for Monday of Passion Week
Epistle: Jonah 3:1-10
Gospel: John 7:32-39
Today's Gospel reading contains a cryptic reference to the Passion, just as today's Epistle contains a cryptic reference to the judgment and desctruction of Jersualem after the Passion.
Nineveh was given 40 days to repent of their sins. This city was the capital city of Assyria, the nation chosen by God to be the scourge with which He would strike Israel and scatter them in exile.
But first, that nation would have to be purified. They would have to do penance for their sins and thus avert their own coming chastisement.
Little wonder, then, that Jonah resisted his mission to Nineveh.
Let's put this in perspective: anyone who had studied the Message of Our Lady of Fatima knows that Russia has been chosen by God to be the world's scourge, and that Russia is going to end up annihilating several nations. Some of us suspect that America might be one of the first to feel Russia's sting.
Now suppose that God appeared to you and said, "In 40 days I will destroy Russia, so I want you to go to Moscow and tell them to repent so that their destruction can be avoided."
Would you heed the voice of God? Think that one through carefully before you answer. Option 1: I refuse to go to Russia and preach, they don't repent, and God destroys them, thus ultimately saving America from potential annihilation in the future. Option 2: I go to Russia, preach, they repent, and then they're home-free to come and wipe out my country.
That was Jonah's situation, and that was the choice he had to make. No wonder he decided to run away instead.
Notice that there are three parts to the King's message, once he declares that a national repentance must take place:
1) Let neither men nor beasts, oxen, nor sheep taste anything: let them not feed, nor drink water.
2) And let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and cry to the Lord with all their strength
3) and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands.
The king declares a national repentance that consists of fasting, wearing sackcloth, and turning away from evil. This is the essence of Lent - fasting afflicts the belly, and sackcloth irritates the skin, so that these two actions can be thought of in general as "mortifying the flesh." But these things are not enough! What God really and truly wants to see is a turning away from sin - or in other words, a firm purpose of amendment.
The mortification is a good beginning; it puts us in a better position to beg God for forgiveness. After all, how seriously is He supposed to take you if you simply lie there, covered in your own filth, making no attempt to move but asking for mercy? Then, having mortified ourselves, we must actually turn away from the sin we have loved, and promise to do everything in our power to avoid those sins in the future - even if that means making permanent lifestyle changes.
Nineveh did those things, and God spared them. But His sparing of them simultaneously means destruction for Israel, because Israel would not repent.
Hundreds of years later, as the God-Man walked the earth, the situation had changed very little. He found Himself having to compare Israel of His day to Assyria of old when He said, "The men of Ninive shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they did penance at the preaching of Jonas. And behold a greater than Jonas here." (Matt. 12:41)
The words of today's Gospel echo the story of Jonah: the Jews ask, "Whither will He go, that we shall not find him? Will He go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles and teach the Gentiles?" Indeed He will. Just as Jonah ceased prophesying to Israel and instead went to "teach the Gentiles" in Assyria, so also will Jesus and His Church soon leave Israel to damnation and go to the Gentiles instead.
And so once again history would rhyme with itself; 40 years after the Passion, another Assyria was sent to chastise the Jews - this time, it was Rome, and this time it was a permanent destruction of the temple, a complete closure of the Old Covenant in favor of the New.
Lent is the 40-day period of grace which Nineveh was granted, replayed in the individual soul. The One who is "greater than Jonah" is here among us - present in His Mystical Body, the Church, and substantially and sacramentally present in the Holy Eucharist - and He is calling us to permanent repentance. The 40 days are almost over now. It is time to buckle down and make the last two weeks of Lent truly mean something - let us resolve to increase our discipline and mortify even more mercilessly the concupiscence of the flesh.
In the Gospel, we are shown the remedy: Jesus cried out at the feast, "If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink. He that believeth in Me, as the scripture saith: Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."
As discussed elsewhere, the punctuation of this verse should cause it to read like a poem of parallels:
A1 - If any man thirst
B1 - Let him come to me
B2 - And drink
A2 - He that believeth in me.
C1 - As the Scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water
The one who thirsts is parallel to the one who believes; and the one who comes to Jesus is parallel to the one who drinks. In this arrangement, the words "As the Scripture saith, etc." belong to a new sentence and refer to Christ, not to the believer.
The word "belly" is in Greek koilia, which refers to the heart or to the innermost being of a man; there is both a forward and a backward-reaching application of this text.
It reaches backwards to Ezekiel's vision in which he saw that "waters issued out from under the threshold of the house [temple] toward the east," and "the waters came down to the right side of the temple to the south part of the altar." (Ezek. 47:1)
But Ezekiel's vision reaches forward to find its fulfillment - it looks to the Passion of Christ, when His sacred Body (which He spoke of as being the temple in John 2) was pierced with a lance, and blood and water flowed from the right side of the New Temple - when rivers of living water flowed out of His koilia, His Sacred Heart.
St. John Chrysostom is only one of many Church Fathers who saw the blood and water as symbols of the two great sacraments: Baptism and the Holy Eucharist.
These two sacraments, then, are the living waters which flowed from Christ's Sacred Heart, and which must be our remedy against sin - Baptism, which removes Original Sin and makes us children of God and heirs to heaven, and the Holy Eucharist, which St. Ignatius of Antioch (110 A.D.) called "the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death." (Epistle to the Ephesians, 20)
And the word of the Lord came to Jonas the second time saying: Arise, and go to Ninive, the great city: and preach in it the preaching that I bid thee. And Jonas arose, and went to Ninive, according to the word of the Lord: now Ninive was a great city of three days' journey. And Jonas began to enter into the city one day's journey: and he cried and said: Yet forty days and Ninive shall be destroyed. And the men of Ninive believed in God: and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least. And the word came to the king of Ninive: and he rose up out of his throne, and cast away his robe from him, and was clothed in sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published in Ninive, from the mouth of the king and of his princes, saying: Let neither men nor beasts, oxen, nor sheep taste anything: let them not feed, nor drink water. And let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and cry to the Lord with all their strength, and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn, and forgive: and will turn away from his fierce anger, and we shall not perish? And God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not.
Gospel: John 7:32-39
The Pharisees heard the people murmuring these things concerning Him: and the rulers and Pharisees sent ministers to apprehend him. Jesus therefore said to them: "Yet a little while I am with you: and then I go to Him that sent Me. You shall seek Me and shall not find Me: and where I am, thither you cannot come." The Jews therefore said among themselves: Whither will He go, that we shall not find him? Will He go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles and teach the Gentiles? What is this saying that He hath said: You shall seek Me and shall not find Me? And: Where I am, you cannot come? And on the last, and great day of the festivity, Jesus stood and cried, saying: "If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink. He that believeth in Me, as the scripture saith: Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Now this He said of the Spirit which they should receive who believed in Him: for as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Today's Gospel reading contains a cryptic reference to the Passion, just as today's Epistle contains a cryptic reference to the judgment and desctruction of Jersualem after the Passion.
Nineveh was given 40 days to repent of their sins. This city was the capital city of Assyria, the nation chosen by God to be the scourge with which He would strike Israel and scatter them in exile.
But first, that nation would have to be purified. They would have to do penance for their sins and thus avert their own coming chastisement.
Little wonder, then, that Jonah resisted his mission to Nineveh.
Let's put this in perspective: anyone who had studied the Message of Our Lady of Fatima knows that Russia has been chosen by God to be the world's scourge, and that Russia is going to end up annihilating several nations. Some of us suspect that America might be one of the first to feel Russia's sting.
Now suppose that God appeared to you and said, "In 40 days I will destroy Russia, so I want you to go to Moscow and tell them to repent so that their destruction can be avoided."
Would you heed the voice of God? Think that one through carefully before you answer. Option 1: I refuse to go to Russia and preach, they don't repent, and God destroys them, thus ultimately saving America from potential annihilation in the future. Option 2: I go to Russia, preach, they repent, and then they're home-free to come and wipe out my country.
That was Jonah's situation, and that was the choice he had to make. No wonder he decided to run away instead.
Notice that there are three parts to the King's message, once he declares that a national repentance must take place:
1) Let neither men nor beasts, oxen, nor sheep taste anything: let them not feed, nor drink water.
2) And let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and cry to the Lord with all their strength
3) and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands.
The king declares a national repentance that consists of fasting, wearing sackcloth, and turning away from evil. This is the essence of Lent - fasting afflicts the belly, and sackcloth irritates the skin, so that these two actions can be thought of in general as "mortifying the flesh." But these things are not enough! What God really and truly wants to see is a turning away from sin - or in other words, a firm purpose of amendment.
The mortification is a good beginning; it puts us in a better position to beg God for forgiveness. After all, how seriously is He supposed to take you if you simply lie there, covered in your own filth, making no attempt to move but asking for mercy? Then, having mortified ourselves, we must actually turn away from the sin we have loved, and promise to do everything in our power to avoid those sins in the future - even if that means making permanent lifestyle changes.
Nineveh did those things, and God spared them. But His sparing of them simultaneously means destruction for Israel, because Israel would not repent.
Hundreds of years later, as the God-Man walked the earth, the situation had changed very little. He found Himself having to compare Israel of His day to Assyria of old when He said, "The men of Ninive shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they did penance at the preaching of Jonas. And behold a greater than Jonas here." (Matt. 12:41)
The words of today's Gospel echo the story of Jonah: the Jews ask, "Whither will He go, that we shall not find him? Will He go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles and teach the Gentiles?" Indeed He will. Just as Jonah ceased prophesying to Israel and instead went to "teach the Gentiles" in Assyria, so also will Jesus and His Church soon leave Israel to damnation and go to the Gentiles instead.
And so once again history would rhyme with itself; 40 years after the Passion, another Assyria was sent to chastise the Jews - this time, it was Rome, and this time it was a permanent destruction of the temple, a complete closure of the Old Covenant in favor of the New.
Lent is the 40-day period of grace which Nineveh was granted, replayed in the individual soul. The One who is "greater than Jonah" is here among us - present in His Mystical Body, the Church, and substantially and sacramentally present in the Holy Eucharist - and He is calling us to permanent repentance. The 40 days are almost over now. It is time to buckle down and make the last two weeks of Lent truly mean something - let us resolve to increase our discipline and mortify even more mercilessly the concupiscence of the flesh.
In the Gospel, we are shown the remedy: Jesus cried out at the feast, "If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink. He that believeth in Me, as the scripture saith: Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."
As discussed elsewhere, the punctuation of this verse should cause it to read like a poem of parallels:
A1 - If any man thirst
B1 - Let him come to me
B2 - And drink
A2 - He that believeth in me.
C1 - As the Scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water
The one who thirsts is parallel to the one who believes; and the one who comes to Jesus is parallel to the one who drinks. In this arrangement, the words "As the Scripture saith, etc." belong to a new sentence and refer to Christ, not to the believer.
The word "belly" is in Greek koilia, which refers to the heart or to the innermost being of a man; there is both a forward and a backward-reaching application of this text.
It reaches backwards to Ezekiel's vision in which he saw that "waters issued out from under the threshold of the house [temple] toward the east," and "the waters came down to the right side of the temple to the south part of the altar." (Ezek. 47:1)
But Ezekiel's vision reaches forward to find its fulfillment - it looks to the Passion of Christ, when His sacred Body (which He spoke of as being the temple in John 2) was pierced with a lance, and blood and water flowed from the right side of the New Temple - when rivers of living water flowed out of His koilia, His Sacred Heart.
St. John Chrysostom is only one of many Church Fathers who saw the blood and water as symbols of the two great sacraments: Baptism and the Holy Eucharist.
Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning, which I will explain to you. I said that water and blood symbolized baptism and the holy eucharist. From these two sacraments the Church is born: from baptism, “the cleansing water that gives rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit”, and from the holy eucharist. Since the symbols of baptism and the Eucharist flowed from his side, it was from his side that Christ fashioned the Church, as he had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam ... God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and the water after his own death.
Do you understand, then, how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us all to eat? By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life. (St. John Chrysostom, The Catecheses, quoted in the Divine Office readings for Good Friday)
These two sacraments, then, are the living waters which flowed from Christ's Sacred Heart, and which must be our remedy against sin - Baptism, which removes Original Sin and makes us children of God and heirs to heaven, and the Holy Eucharist, which St. Ignatius of Antioch (110 A.D.) called "the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death." (Epistle to the Ephesians, 20)
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